


A Broken Hallelujah

by waywardspirits



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcoholic Dean, Also known as: that one fic where I try way too hard to be Stephen King, Also known as: that one fic where the boys swear in creative ways, Alternate Canon, Angel Wings, Angst, Bobby Lives, Bobby is sick of Dean's shit, Castiel Being an Idiot, Castiel Can Hear Longing, Crowley is a Little Shit, DAMMIT DEAN STOP BUSTING UP THE IMPALA, Dean Being an Idiot, Dean in Denial, Dean is Bad at Feelings, Emotional Constipation, Family Feels, Gore, I apologize in advance, I just like breaking Dean's heart, M/M, Manpain, Metadouche is still a douche, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sam Is So Done, Somebody please save me from looking like an asshat and beta this mess kthx, WIP, You can definitely tell it's a wip
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-09-18 01:45:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 41,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9360146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywardspirits/pseuds/waywardspirits
Summary: All Bobby knows for certain is that his boy is grieving, and grieving hard. He's coming unglued in true Dean Winchester fashion--guilt, anger, denial of said guilt/anger, half a fifth of something strong before bed, Sam gets a broken nose, shattered lamps and holes in motel room walls. He needs someone to tell him there's hope when he doesn't have any. He needs hisfamily, and Cas is an important part of that.Hewas, anyway.Bobby means to put a boot in that angel's holy ass when they catch up to him.Ifthey catch up to him.





	1. In the Wind

**Author's Note:**

> Oh Jesus I have no idea where this thing's going, it started out because I wanted self-indulgent 'Bobby is a good father figure' feels and then things got out of hand and my Destiel started showing oops.  
> If anyone has any feedback on this mess of sorta-but-sorta-not-canon weirdness, that'd be rad.

Bobby Singer may have been born at night, but it sure as _fuck_ wasn't last night. There isn't much that escapes his watchful eye when it comes to the Winchester boys. Take Dean's sullen silence, for example--they've been on the road for a solid three hours now, and he hasn't cracked a _single_ dick joke. Hell, he'll barely speak at all. His eyes stay focused on the highway, but Bobby can tell he's not really here. He's checked out, lost in his own head somewhere, most likely running through the impossible labyrinth of dark corridors with his hair on fire and code red alarms blaring.

It's not a good sign.

When it comes to Dean, quiet is bad and calm is always _too_ calm. You never know how much time you're gonna have to get your ass down to the cellar before the storm rips your roof off, but it's usually not much.

Bobby clears his throat. "You're a real Chatty Cathy today, aintcha?"

"Nothin to talk about."

"Oh, I beg to differ," Bobby says.

Dean lets out a heavy sigh. "Sammy put you up to this, didn't he?"

"In his defense, he prob'ly wouldn't have needed to if you weren't so boneheaded."

"I'm fine, Bobby." The weariness in his voice betrays the words. He doesn't mean it, but sometimes it's all he has to fall back on when he's cornered. Bobby gets it, but he can't help wondering who he learned that particular defense mechanism from. Was it him, or was it John? Doesn't matter either way, probably, but he can't help questioning how many of his own mistakes, as well-meaning as they were, led to shaping the shell-shocked warrior Dean is now.

"You know better than to try an' bullshit a bullshitter," Bobby tells him.

Dean laughs, but it sounds hollow. He scrubs a hand down his face and gives a half-assed shrug. "Look, I just wanna keep my eye on the ball right now. Cas is in the wind, and we gotta get him back or shit's gonna go sideways. I can _feel_ it. Once we find him, you an' me can paint our nails and watch Twilight and share our emotions while we soak in a nice bubblebath until the end of fuckin _days_ , but right now?" He shakes his head a little. "Bobby, if we don't get to him--"

" _He'll_ be the end of days. I know, son."

The way Dean's lower lip trembles hurts Bobby's heart. He'd never given much thought to the idea of God before he met the angels, but now the prick was numero uno on his 'Monsters to Kill' list. What _god_ would ask so much of these boys? What _god_ would put a legacy of nothing but heartbreak on their backs just to keep the world turning long enough for the next evil thing to step up? What _god_ would ask _him_ , a cranky old drunk that loves these boys-- _his boys_ \--to watch as they stumble and break and have to haul them back to their feet each time they hit the ground, _just_ so they can rush headlong towards the next suicide run? It isn't fair, not in the slightest. Sam and Dean are good men. They deserve a better hand than the one they got dealt.

"We'll get 'im back," Bobby says gently.

"We fuckin _better_." There's a bitterness in the words that sounds more like John than himself, and Bobby has to bite back the urge to reach out and throttle him for it. Dean's _better_ than this, goddammit, certainly better than his piece of shit father _ever_ was.

"Listen, ya little shit--" He tells him, "--you wanna keep your head in the game, that's fine, but don't kid yourself. You ain't been in the game for _months_ , not by a long shot."

"Cram it up your ass, old man!" Dean snaps, white-knuckling the steering wheel. "The fuck do you think I've been _doing_ lately? Cause I sure as _hell_ ain't just been sittin around watchin crappy _Lifetime_ movies all mothercunting day. I've _been_ trying to find him, remember? Why do you think Sammy got himself a black eye when he told me to quit?"

"You hit him 'cause you drank yourself stupid, you idjit." He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. "All you do is sit there torturing yourself over shit that ain't your _fault_ , you wallow around like a fuckin _moron_ , and you're too obsessed with that to have the slightest clue how to work this out. You're fuckin' up on the job to the point where Sam would rather go solo than haveta keep babysittin' to make sure a damn ghost doesn't break your neck. You call that havin' your head in the game?"

Dean doesn't answer.

"You miss Cas," Bobby says, his tone softer now, warmer. "I get that, but puttin yourself into a tailspin ain't gonna do a lick of good." Dean still keeps quiet, so he takes a breath and continues: "How do you expect to talk some sense into that idjit when you're on the cusp of goin nutzoid yourself?"

"I am _not_ \--"

"Yeah, spare me the indignant act, wouldja? You ain't foolin' anyone. Not me, and definitely not your brother."

Dean's clenching his jaw so hard that Bobby half expects to hear his teeth cracking under the pressure. He can't really _blame_ him for being so torn up over Cas, certainly can't fault him for caring so much about the best friend he's ever had, but he's a Hunter, and Hunters don't get to cry until the job's done. In the meantime, you button up your fucking coat and do what you gotta do. That's just how it is.

"We'll get him back," Bobby says again.

For the first time since their conversation started, Dean turns to meet his gaze. He's got this little-boy-lost look on his face, somehow made even more distressing to see by the longer than normal stubble and glassy, thousand yard stare. "I'm not so sure," he admits.

"That's because you're as big an idjit as he is."

To his relief, Dean cracks a smile. It's tiny, but it's _there_. It's a start.

Deep down, Bobby isn't so sure himself. All he knows for certain is that his boy is grieving, and grieving hard. He's coming unglued in true Dean Winchester fashion--guilt, anger, denial of said guilt/anger, half a fifth of something strong before bed, Sam gets a broken nose, shattered lamps and holes in motel room walls. He needs someone to tell him there's hope when he doesn't have any. He needs his _family_ , and Cas is an important part of that.

He _was_ , anyway.

Bobby means to put a boot in that angel's holy ass when they catch up to him.

 _If_ they catch up to him.

*

Dean doesn't know that Castiel still watches over him every night. It's better that he remain unaware--he'd likely throw a fit, and Cas couldn't work up the nerve to show himself even if he _wanted_ to. Not now, not after the way he left.

He had his reasons for doing so, of course. He has good intentions. But...that's how the story always goes with him: Castiel, the legendary angel of the Lord, the rebellious rank-breaker, the crusader that chose the humans and shunned the Holy, the soldier that always seems to do too much bad when he only wanted to do a little good. Things never pan out quite the way he thought. When all is said and done and the dust settles, his actions are never as righteous as he first believed.

He is nothing if not strong in his convictions, but he's beginning to understand that it led straight to his own undoing.

Stupid. He's always so, so _stupid_.

Dean prays to him, but almost never on purpose. Not anymore, at least. He's too proud to do it of his own volition. Cas asked him why he'd stopped praying once, and Dean told him it was because it felt too much like begging. 

Castiel still doesn't understand what he meant.

It's a whole different story when he's drunk or sleeping, though. The floodgates burst open, and Cas is stuck trying to fight a current of secondhand feelings he can't even  _name_ , much less comprehend. It's all muddled, a barrage of half-formed thoughts and strange emotions, complicated things. _Painful_ things.

It's overwhelming. It _hurts_ , and he doesn't want to feel it anymore, but he does.

God help him, he _does_.

Truthfully, it's all he really _can_ do as he sits in the shadows of Bobby's familiar living room, listening to the steady deep-sleep rhythm of Dean's breathing. There's an empty bottle of Jameson on the coffee table. Next to it is an ashtray with a considerable amount of cigarette butts inside. Cas finds it unsettling, somehow. In all the years he's known Dean Winchester, he has _never_ seen him smoke.

Something inside his vessel's chest feels like it's trying to work its way up into his throat. He swallows hard and loosens his tie to try and get the lump forming behind his Adam's apple to dissipate, but it only gets worse. He can't tell if what he feel is all him or a ping from one of the Hunter's nightmares, but it's enough to make him want to rip his own Grace out. And then find a liquor store. And then jump off a building, preferably a very tall one.

He whacks the back of his head against the wall a little, just enough to hurt but not enough to make a noise that would alarm anyone in the house. Sitting here is an act of masochism and he _knows_ it, he just doesn't care much.

Cas has always been happy to bleed for the Winchesters. That will never change.

It's why he left in the first place.

The boys don't know it, though. He didn't want them to. He couldn't risk giving them the chance to talk him out of his mission. It had to be done quickly, there was no time for hesitation or explanations. Sam might've understood if he made his case, but _Dean_? Dean never would. He'd _never_ let Cas walk away. He would have fought with every fiber of his being, he would have pleaded, and Castiel's resolve would have faded away like the stars at daybreak.

There's no time for sentiments, not with war on the horizon. Dean is searching for him, even after what he's done, even after what undoubtedly seems like a cruel betrayal on the angel's part, but Cas cannot allow himself to be found.

Desperate times call for last-ditch measures. Don't they always?

The morning sun is just beginning to rise when Castiel finally rips himself from the Hunter's side. He had hoped that maybe this part would get easier as the days stacked into weeks and the weeks into months, but he was wrong. Whatever pulls him to Dean--their connection, their bond, or perhaps simply an overwhelming longing--is not of import, however.

Saving the world _is_.

*

Dean's up and moving by the tail end of dawn, screaming headache be damned. Sammy's due back from a solo salt-and-burn later today, but he's not really looking forward to it. They didn't exactly part ways on the best of terms, and Dean isn't quite ready to stop being pissed about it.

He just can't figure out why Sam doesn't care about Cas as much as _he_ does, can't understand why he's willing to just...let Cas _go_ after everything the angel's done for them, and he resents him for it. He resents the fact that Sam has no problem shaking it off, because _he_ can't. Out of all fucking things--Hell, multiple doomsdays, the deaths of anybody he ever cared about-- _this_ is the thing that sent him straight to the floor. _This_ is the one he doesn't think a little time can fix. The shit's hit the fan more times that he can fucking _count_ , and a damned nerd-angel dressed as a street flasher is the one that manages to take away his mothercunting raincoat. It's sort of funny, in a gallows humor kind of way.

He wants to hate Cas for this. He wants to be more like Sam, truth be told--almost ambivalent, not at all convinced that his world has crumbled into dust.

 _Want in one hand, shit in the other, see which fills up faster._ He can't remember who said it to him or when, but he's pretty sure it was one of Dad's nuggets of wisdom. 

Dean lights a cigarette and zombie-shuffles into the kitchen to put some coffee on. Hopefully the caffeine and a few extra-strength Tylenol can dull the searing throb in his head, because he's got a sinking feeling that today's gonna be a _bitch_.

His hunch is dead-on, as it turns out.

Bobby gets drunk with him while they wait for Sam to pull up, and he spends a good deal of those few hours pouring over dusty tomes of lore and calling his little brother every shitty name he can think of under his breath. It's _motherfuckin jackass_ this and _dumb lil cocksucker_ that, with short bursts of-- _Hey, Bobby, where would we get kelpie blood_?--and Bobby offers input where needed, but he mostly leaves him to it. Maybe he senses Dean's need to be _doing_ something, but Dean only gives it a passing thought before he's copying down another summoning ritual into the legal pad balanced on his thigh.

They've tried almost twenty spells already. Cas is cloaking himself somehow. It makes sense from a strategic standpoint--he knows Dean can't just let him make a clean break, he knows Dean will try to move heaven and hell and all the mountains in between on earth to haul him back, if only for an explanation or some semblance of closure or one last punch to the throat.

Dean _never_ thought Cas would leave, and it makes him feel weird, knowing he was wrong. Cas has always known everything, he reached into Hell and hauled the skinned-alive soul he'd been reduced to _out_ , but for all the angel's vast knowledge, he can't understand what that _felt_ like. He doesn't understand that pull, because he doesn't _have_ a soul. He doesn't understand attachments. He doesn't understand emotion. He's just one of God's fucking robots. _Artificial intelligence_.

Getting Cas to understand the human heart is like getting a gorilla to understand trigonometry.

The pencil snaps in his hand. Bobby glances over with a raised eyebrow, but he doesn't comment, and Dean's almost grateful for that. He tosses the useless half onto the table and keeps writing.

Sam finally shows his stupid moose face around three that afternoon (his left eye is still circled by the fading yellow-green-purple bruise Dean gave him, and part of him feels a vengeful satisfaction when he sees it, because it serves the fucker _right_ ). Bobby greets him as per usual, but Dean does his best to pretend his little brother isn't there after his initial appraisal. It seems to suit Sammy just fine, too--he stands in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest and his face schooled into the trademark bitchface while he shoots the shit with Bobby about how the hunt went down.

Dean tunes them out. He wants to stay focused on the task at hand, on finding the idiot angel so he can wring his stupid neck. That's all he really gives a damn about. Sam'll get over his bullshit eventually. He may think it's a lost cause now--and, yeah, it probably is--but Dean Winchester has never been one to just roll over and accept defeat, even when it seems inevitable. That's not the man his father raised him to be.

The room lapses into tense silence after a while. It's the kind of quiet that makes his skin crawl. He dumps the last of his beer down his throat and gets up to get another out of the fridge. He can feel Sam's eyes on him, tracking his movement, and can distinctly sense how much his little brother wants to say something. Dean doesn't want to hear it, though. If he has to have _one_ more goddamn heart-to-heart, he's going to blow the back of his own fucking skull out.

 _Don't you do it,_ He growls in his head, vaguely hoping that some sort of sibling telepathy might help to get the message across, _Sammy, I swear to GOD, don't fucking--_

Sam clears his throat.

_Dude, I mean it, don't open your fucking mouth or I will END you--_

"I still don't think this is a good idea," Sam says.

 _You son of a bitch._ "Yeah?" Dean lets out a short, humorless laugh, "Well, nobody asked you."

" _Dean_.." Bobby starts.

"Who's fuckin' side are you _on_?!" He snaps.

"It ain't about _sides_ , you idjit, it's about you runnin' around on the edge of a cliff with your fuckin eyes shut!" Bobby yells back. "Hell, I've been helping you so far, haven't I?"

"Look--" Sam butts in, holding his hands out in a sort of _I-give_ gesture, "I'm not sayin' we stop looking for him--"

"Really? That's weird, cause it kinda sounds like that's _exactly_ what you're saying."

"Just--christ, Dean,  _shut up for a second--_ hear me out, man!"

Dean's having no part of it. He scowls and goes back to his workstation. "Fuck you. I'll find him on my own."

"You've been trying to find him for months! How's that been working out for you?" Sam runs a hand through his hair and sighs. "You're not _getting anywhere_ , not like this."

The worst part is knowing somewhere down deep that Sam's got a valid point, but Dean would rather have his own fingernails torn out with pliers than actually admit it. Instead, he locks his jaw and cracks open another book.

"He doesn't want to be found," Sam says gently, and _god_ , Dean hates him for it.

"Doesn't matter," he says, as firmly as he can manage with the lump forming in his throat. "I'm gunna find him anyway. There's something going down, something he didn't tell us. He wouldn't have left for no good reason."

"And you know that for sure?"

Dean fixes his brother with a hard, unflinching stare. If looks could kill, Sam would be on the floor in the throes of a final death-spasm. He seems to _know_ it, too, if the way he suddenly becomes fascinated with the doorframe he's leaning against is anything to go by."Yes!" Dean insists, "YES, I know for sure, because it's fuckin _Cas!_  He's a dumb motherfucker, but he's _our_ dumb motherfucker! You wanna give up on him, go right ahead, but don't expect _me_ to ever forgive you for it."

Sam doesn't say anything, so he turns his attention to Bobby. "That goes for you, too. Help me find him or _don't_ , but I'm done talking about it. This isn't a debate and it's not up for discussion. I'm _done_."

Bobby just watches him for a long few moments, his sharp old eyes broadcasting a weird mix of sympathy and irritation. It's a look Dean knows all too well, the paternal _yeah, yeah, you've got a skinned knee, don't be a pussy about it, quit crying or the thing we're hunting is gotta find us_ face. Dad had his own version of that same expression, but Bobby's didn't scare him the way John's did when he was a boy. It sure as _shit_ don't scare him now, but it _does_ cool his jets a little.

"He's my friend, too," Sam finally tells the floor.

"You have a funny way of showin it," Dean says, but his voice doesn't have the bite it did a few minutes ago.

"I just think...maybe he didn't tell us for a reason."

"No shit, Sherlock."

Sam huffs out a breath. "What I mean is--okay, what if he's on the run from angels again?"

"Then he's gonna need backup."

"It's not our war to fight, Dean. If we learned anything from the last few years, it should probably be to let them duke it out, get it outta their system."

"No-can-do, Sammy." Dean says. "It's _Cas_. He's taken a lot of hits for the hometeam, in case you forgot, so the least we can do is take a few for him. Not to mention the human casualties if we _don't_ step in, cause you know good and goddamn well they'll take the fight to our turf."

Bobby leans back in his chair with his arms crossed, shifting his gaze from one Winchester to the other. "Look, you both have points, but Dean's right. We gotta try, at least." There's this note of resignation in his voice, though, an undercurrent of _I don't think we're gonna find him, but fuck it, at least it might placate Dean for the moment._

He gets the message, even if it goes without saying. Doesn't matter, not right now, because he wants to find Cas more than he cares about the context in which they agree to keep looking. His moral compass is pinging, and he's just _gotta_ follow it. Something bad is going to happen if he doesn't, that's all he knows. He feels it down in his bones, even if Bobby and Sam don't.

But he thinks they'll start to, once they start finding leads. He has no idea why it's such a strong kind of sixth sense, an itch somewhere down in his brain that he can't reach in and scratch out. Bobby seems to understand what he means more than Sam does, at least, so maybe the doom-and-gloom Dean keeps feeling is starting to come down on him, too.

Dean looks up at Sam from the table. Sam meets his eye, and he can tell that his little brother is going to swallow his argument and pitch in even before he nods his head. "Okay, fine."

He smiles a little, and Sammy smiles back.

"Okay," Sam repeats, "but I'm kicking his ass."

Dean and Bobby both start laughing.

Sam blinks. "What?"

"Get in line, Sammy," Dean says, "Get in fuckin line."

*

Castiel is staying away from the Hunters as best he can. He can't risk watching over Dean, not when they're looking for him so intensely. Luckily, he's good at disappearing, fading under the radar--he's spent a lot of time doing it lately, certainly more than he likes.

It's going to be much harder to hide soon. Word of what he's been doing will spread among the angels, and it won't take long for the Winchesters to find the trail he's leaving in his wake. That, and the _pull_ he keeps feeling somewhere in the center of his being, the pull that keeps beckoning him to Dean. That's hard to ignore, hard to fight against, but he soldiers on, because what he's doing is right.  _Hopefully._

These days, he thinks he might just be a little in over his head. It's too late to turn back, though. He's already sealed his fate.

_If you're gonna go balls-out, at least commit to it._

His memory of Dean's voice is perfect, he can almost hear that gruff mumble. It makes Cas smile a little. It was something the Hunter often said when he was afraid but was preparing to walk right up to whatever terrible thing was waiting to rip him limb from limb anyway. It was an intriguing part of his personality, that brave and reckless streak. He wavered at times, but he always pushed through. Cas admired it. Dean always did the right thing, and Cas wanted to be righteous, too. He was _supposed_ to be, he was an angel. A misguided one, yes, a lost one, a fallen one, sure, but righteousness was supposed to be part of the angel-of-the-Lord basic setup.

He knows what he's doing is bad as he runs his angel blade across his sister's throat. It's _awful_ , it's barbaric, but it must be done. The alternative to this is even worse.

The gash is more blue light than blood--her Grace is what he wants, not her life--and she watches it flow towards him with horrified eyes. "Castiel, _no_ ," she pleads.

He doesn't listen, can't afford to let guilt get in the way. It's _there_ , the overwhelming urge to apologize, to say something about how he'll give her Grace right back when he's through with his mission and it's nothing personal, just a horrible thing he must do for the greater good, but to voice these things would be to insult her intelligence. His reasons and explainations won't matter, even if he had the time to lay them out. Best to just get it all over with. There are many more wings to clip.

He takes her Grace and watches her fall to the floor, grasping her throat to stop the bloodflow from the shallow wound, her breath coming in frightened bursts. " _Why, brother_?" Her voice wavers, her throat gets clogged with feelings she's never had to experience before, and Castiel can't stop himself as he crouches down and reaches a hand out towards her. She flinches, tries to scoot backwards, but her terror and the newness of being human makes her slow, uncoordinated.

"I'm sorry," he tells her, and he means it. Her eyes are wide, overflowing with tears, a shade of deep brown. It pains him to look at her, but he makes himself do it, and as his fingertips touch her cheek, she cringes.

" _Why_?" She asks again.

Castiel draws his hand back, but he doesn't answer.

He leaves her there, shaking and alone and hurt, a human shadow of the heavenly power she once possessed. Castiel can feel her Grace somewhere in the center of himself, feels it trying to resist as it becomes part of him.

A trickle of blood leaks out of his nose. He wipes it on his sleeve without much thought, but somewhere deep down, he knows it's not a sign of good things to come.

No matter. He would be foolish to expect his vessel to hold all this energy for long.

Castiel will not survive his mission. He knows it with every fiber of his being, and he's resigned himself to that. He's okay with it.

What he _isn't_ okay with is dying before he can carry out his duties. If he has to die--to go _balls-out_ , as Dean would put it, he'll be _damned_ if he does it for a big pile of nothing.

*

Dean's been waiting for Crowley to show for the better part of an hour and a half, and it's starting to piss him off. He paces a back-and-forth path along a stretch of the rundown country road, idly kicking at chunks of gravel as he grumbles a stream of curses under his breath. Working with the King of Hell is never ideal--especially considering the dickhead's penchant for taking his sweet ass time--but it's the best shot Dean has at finding Cas. Crowley has eyes and ears all over the creation, and if Cas is getting his stupid ass into some nefarious shit, he'd be the first one to know about it.

Doesn't mean Dean _likes_ it, but that hardly seems important. Okay, yeah, Crowley talks too much and he'd double-cross the Winchesters for a candy bar if he really needed a sugar fix, but he's got his uses...when he decides to make an appearance, anyway, and usually only when it benefits him somehow, but _still_.

"C'mon, you son of a bitch," Dean mutters to the rocks. He stops his pacing and leans up against the driver's side of the Impala. He's all crossed arms and scowls, his meager reserve of patience is just about gone. "If this little prick makes me _actually_ summon him, I swear to _fuck_ I'm going to--"

The hairs on the back of his neck start to stand on end, and he doesn't have to turn around to know that Crowley's standing on the other side of the car.

"Don't stop ranting on my account," the demon says.

Dean can _hear_ the smirk on his face, and suddenly the urge to bitchslap the tastebuds out of the smarmy fucker's mouth starts to seem pretty reasonable. He grits his teeth, counts to three in his head to keep himself from doing something asinine, and finally faces that infuriatingly smug smile.

" _Evening_ ," Crowley says, both hands in his pockets as he walks around the car. "I see Moose opted not to join you. Having a little spat, are we?"

Dean steadfastly _refuses_ to take the bait the demon's trying to dangle in his face. "I need some intel," he tells him. "Cas is off the reservation."

"I'm aware." The words come out in a sort of purr. This is the kinda shit Crowley fucking _basks_ in, and if Dean didn't need a lead right now, he'd probably kick the shit out of him just for funsies.

"... _And_?"

"And your feathered friend is way on the outskirts, I'm sorry to say." There's a grin on his face that says he isn't sorry at all, not even a little.

"Outskirts of what, exactly?" Dean asks.

"Sanity, for starters."

Dean rolls his eyes. "Yeah, it's Cas, that's kind of a given. What's the word on the grapevine?"

The King of Hell's face morphs into something that looks almost sympathetic, but it's a mockery, and Dean knows it. "Nothing good, I'm afraid."

Dean pinches the bridge of his nose and lets out a long-suffering sigh. "If you don't stop being so vague and cryptic, I'm going to beat the _literal_ hell out of you."

"I'd like to see you try, darling." He's grinning again, and he takes a step closer. He's having a fucking _ball_ with this, but Dean's not in the mood to play. It takes Crowley a minute to realize that he's not going to get whatever reaction he'd hoped for, and then he looks almost disappointed. He steps back again, out of stabbing range. "Rumor has it that Castiel's gone full cannibal."

"The _fuck_ does that mean?" Dean snaps, but almost as soon as the words fly out, it starts to dawn on him. His eyes go wide, and Crowley gives him a moment to wrap his head around it, but he can't. "Your sources are fulla _shit_! Cas wouldn't--he's got no reason to!--he's one of _us_."

"You sure about that, Squirrel? He's fucked you over before, right?"

"Yeah, because of you. _Thanks_ _for that_ , by the way."

The demon chuckles. "You're adorable when you're grumpy. It's like watching a kitten learn how to mewl."

"Are you in on it?" Dean hates the desperation in his own voice, but he can't figure out how to stop it. "His... _plan_ , or whatever...are you working together?"

Crowley arches a brow. "...if I was in on it, do you really think I'd _tell you?_ "

"...valid point," Dean concedes. "Alright, so, what's he bulking up for?"

"No idea."

"Don't give me that bullshit, you _fuck_ \--"

"I. Don't. Know. Maybe he's going to be on the cover of _Halo Monthly_ and wants to look particularly smite-y."

"I fucking hate you," Dean growls. "You know that?"

The demon's grin gets wider. "Ooh, say it again. But slower this time, yeah?"

Dean winds back to throw a punch, but Crowley's already gone.

Of fucking _course_ he is.

"Mother _FUCKER_!" Dean snarls and kicks a dent into the side of the car instead.

*

"Crowley could be lying," Sam says carefully. He knows Dean's one wrong word away from flipping the table and smashing up the place, but that's what booze is for. It tamps his nerves down just enough for Sam to feel like they can be in the same room without needing Bobby to stitch them up after.

Dean just scoffs and lights up another cigarette.

"Should quit that," Sam tries again. "You're gonna regret it when you start getting winded on hunts."

His brother makes a grumpy noise and takes a drag.

"You...think he's telling the truth, don't you?"

If you didn't know Dean as well as Sam did, it'd be easy to miss the subtle tell--he locks his jaw and his head tilts down; merely a ghost of a nod, but it's enough. Sam swallows hard, pulls up a chair as near to the forcefield of his brother's brooding as he dares. Dean's a hothead, sure, but his intuition is pretty strong most times. They've jumped into countless rivers of shit with a lot less than a drunk Hunter's gut to spur them on.

He should've known better than to suggest staying on the sidelines when Cas might be in trouble, and he feels bad about it now. Cas is their _friend_ , the only one that hasn't managed to die. Or, rather, the only one that keeps coming back on a consistent basis.

It makes sense that Dean would go barrelling after him--that's who Dean _is_. He doesn't accept things until he's forced to, until he's worn thin and rundown and all the tricks up his sleeve are exhausted. It's easily his most valiant (albeit frustrating) personality trait, the one Sam admires and hates in the same breath. Admirable because Dean does whatever it takes to get the job done, no matter how much it hurts, but hateful _because_ it hurts, because Sam watches him tear himself to pieces and he never knows when the levee might just break beyond repair. He doesn't want to think about the prospect of a day where Dean's going to take a hit and can't bounce back, and if anyone's gonna deliver that final blow, it'll fucking be Castiel.

Dean doesn't talk about how much Cas means to him--never has--but he doesn't have to. Sam's spent the last few years as a third wheel in their presence, he's watched them long enough to know that their dynamic is as much about what goes unspoken as the things they actually _say_. The too-long looks, the way Dean always takes it upon himself to straighten Cas's tie, the way his hands clutch at the back of that stupid trenchcoat when they hug before he remembers himself and pushes him off. The bickering, the fond eye-rolls at whatever basic human thing Cas just couldn't _quite_ comprehend. The prayers, back in the old days, always whispered like secrets when Sam pretended to be sleeping and Cas was off fighting the good fight. The tears that came with those prayers, the drunken pleas and _I-need-you's._

Sam knows what it means, alright, but the kicker is that he doesn't think Dean has the slightest _clue_.

What would happen if it took Cas going dark side for him to finally figure it out? Sam's been running every possible outcome in his head, and the answer he keeps coming up with is _nothing good_. It's not something he can just come right out and _say_ , though. He knows his big brother better than anybody, he's fully aware that their father had strict, ironclad ideas on what it meant to be a man, none of which involved falling balls-over-applecarts for an angel, much less a _dude-angel._ To suggest otherwise--especially _now_ , when Dean's already climbing the walls--would just be _begging_ for trouble.

But John Winchester is dead, and Dean's approaching the tail end of his thirties, and Sam's always thought it doesn't matter _who_ you love, as long as you get to love someone.

Having that someone be an awkward, otherworldly being that may or may not be setting a sinister plot into motion isn't ideal, sure, but that can't be helped. If they're lucky, maybe it'll be as easy as getting Dean and Cas into the same room and they can diffuse the situation with their sexual tension or something.

Yeah, right. Luck doesn't really favor the Winchester clan. It's never that easy.

"Pass that here," Sam says after a long while, gesturing to the bottle of whiskey Dean's been nursing for longer that he probably should've been allowed. Dean pushes it across the table, and then puts his head in his hands.

"I just can't figure out why he'd do it, Sammy. I mean, it's not like the apocalypse is breathin down our necks again, right?"

 _Not that we know of, anyway._ Sam takes a long drink, passes the bottle back. "We'll have plenty of time to figure out the how and why once we find him."

"I've tried everythin I can think of, most of it twice." He raises up again to put the bottle to his lips, and Sam kind of wonders when he started to look so _old_ , so exhausted. They always look tired--it comes with the territory in their line of work--but this is different. Dean's like their dad's old jacket, there's holes and frays in him now, scuffs and worry lines that can't be smoothed out. When did those crows' feet settle in around his eyes? Was it when Cas took off, or had they been there longer, and Sam just never noticed?

"I'm sorry," Sam tells him. "About all the shit I said. I'm sorry I wanted to stop looking."

"'M still not sorry for punching you," Dean grumbles as he offers the whiskey back, but he's smiling a bit.

Sam barks out a laugh and shakes his head. "Yeah, no, I earned that one. Wasn't that hard of a hit, anyway. You're goin' kinda soft these days."

His brother gives an offended noise, and they settle into a round of the typical banter-- _"you're hiding a shield of some kind in all that hair, you dick!" "bullshit, I fell down on purpose just so you wouldn't feel bad about being out of shape!"_ \--and by the time they quiet down again, Sam feels marginally better. Individually, the boys are deadly, but when they work together, they're _legends_. They'll find Cas, and Sam fully intends to re-instill the fear of God in the motherfucker once they do, if only because of what he'd done to Dean by leaving. For all of his tough talk, he knows his brother wouldn't have the heart to do it himself. Fine by Sam, though, because he's going to get a lot of satisfaction out of breaking his own knuckles to make Cas feel a _fraction_ of that pain.

Cas is family, he's the best friend either of them have ever had, but he's not good enough for Dean. Not in Sam's eyes, not right now. ' _Sorry_ ' can fix a fistfight, but it can't fix a betrayal that cuts this deep. All the angel mojo in the universe couldn't patch up the damage he senses in his brother, and his soul wasn't exactly in pristine condition to start.

Cas better have one _mother_ of a good explanation for all this.

*

Castiel zips across the universe non-stop for three weeks straight.

At first, he's just seeking out the other angels and taking what he needs. Then, he's running from the remainder and picking them off when opportunity presents itself. It's a brutal process, and he takes no pleasure from it. They cry out to him, his brothers and sisters, they beg to be killed rather than suffer the indignity of becoming human. They would rather perish than lose who they've always been and all they've ever known. It's cruel to leave them alive, and he hates himself for it, but he _can't_. He can't kill them any more than he could kill an infant. There's something in his heart of hearts, some part of Dean that bled into him when he laid his hand on his soul and brought him up from the pit, that can't allow it.

He certainly had no problem slaying infants _before_ that.

Tonight, Castiel finally stops to rest, safely hidden--momentarily--by the sprawling wilderness surrounding the Ozarks. He perches on the side of one of the mountains and surveys the land below. Even after all he's done, all the grief he's brought, he's still compelled to keep watch over his Father's most beautiful creation. Still compelled to protect it.

"Why did you ask this of me?" He's looking up at the sky, up towards what used to be home, but there's no answer. There never is, and he doesn't understand why he even bothers. He doesn't understand _anything_ anymore.

He takes a breath he doesn't need and closes his eyes. He misses the humans--the ones he's come to think of as _his_ , anyway. If he knows the Winchesters, they're probably on the road right now. Dean's either passed out in the back, too drunk to drive, or he's tapping his fingers against the steering wheel and _wishing_ he was drunk. Sam's probably staring out of the window, going over what spells they've tried to summon him back or which ones might still hold promise, but they don't have the magical prowess that Cas does, even without the extra juice he's got now. He knows how the two of them operate: first, they do the easy spells, things that were a sure bet once upon a time. When none of the usual tricks work, they'll do some digging. Maybe they find a spell here or there, but the ingredients are hard to come by, so they outsource the job of gatherer to Crowley, if they have leverage to do so. When _those_ fail, they'll get desperate. They'll start making deals with unsavory deities, they'll bleed themselves until their lips turn blue, they'll double down and start gambling with their own lives, and none of _that_ will work, either.

Cas doesn't want them to go to those extremes, but he can't stop it.

Only...that isn't quite true. He's going to need to stop it eventually, if only to keep the brothers alive, but he isn't sure if he'd be doing them a kindness. It could be the most blackhearted thing he's ever done, same as letting all the angels he's stolen from live as mere mortals.

He'll shoulder the burdon of what he's done to his own kind, at least long enough to do what needs doing, but he couldn't possibly carry the weight of destroying the Winchesters on the base level. He's dealt them quite a blow already, but he knows Dean, knows he'll heal from that. But to call them off, to make them _hate_ him, to make Dean give up...it would break the righteous man wide open, and Cas has spent far too much time building and rebuilding him for that prospect to feel like anything other than agony.

Then again, Castiel won't survive to see the fallout, so does it really matter?

_(of course it matters Castiel of course it does)_

He presses his hands over his ears, knowing full well that it can't block out the voices. Angel radio was a pain in the ass before this, before absorbing so much Grace, and now all the broadcast signals come from _in_ him, they bounce around his skull like so many celestial wrecking balls.

 _(let me out brother let me out)_  
_(I just want to go home why won't you let me brother please)_  
_(we trusted you Castiel we trusted you we trusted you we trusted you we)_  
_(worse than the Serpent you're a monster now a blasphemy you're)_  
_(OUT let me OUT)_

Cas grits his teeth together, knots his hands into his hair. It's too loud, too high of a pitch, they're all screaming and clamoring at once and he wants it to _STOP, just STOP, just--_

He can't hear his own scream, but he feels it. It tears out of his throat like some vicious, solid _thing_ , something old and evil and tormented, something that makes the entire mountain range shudder. Everything made of glass is shattered for a radius of roughly three miles. The ice covering the lakes and creeks in the nearby area suffer the same fate. Most of the people in that three-mile range drop to the ground in agony as their eardrums burst simultaneously, marring the pristine snow with little trickles of blood. They writhe in pain, confused, off-balance, and cry as they spit the remains of their teeth out. A good number of the humans close to the base of the mountain perish in the resulting avalance, unable to get out of the way before being entombed in the snow they were admiring seconds earlier.

A group of snowboarders--the only ones close enough to actually _see_ the angel--explode all at once, reduced to nothing more than crimson mist with no part larger than a raindrop.

Cas doesn't even notice. He can't hear the chaos, can't process the sheer _carnage_ he's brought to his Father's prized creations. The voices are too loud, too overpowering.

 _(you wretch you savage you abomination)_  
_(home wanna go home)_  
_(I was your friend Castiel why)_  
_(brother)_  
_(blasphemous)_  
_(we trusted)_

He curls in on himself, pleading to God to just kill him, to make it all go away, surely he's not strong enough for this task--

There's a black void creeping into his head, blessed _absence_ , and his entire being cries out for it, clings to it.

It's not death, as he'd hoped, but it'll do.

 

 

 


	2. In the Absence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so. This chapter isn't quite as long, but I felt like I just HAD to end it where I did because reasons.  
> None of this is beta'd, so sorry if there's goofs and stuff.

"Hey, Cas. It's..uh, it's Sam."

He shifts his weight from foot to foot, lets out a heavy sigh. It feels dumb, standing here out in Bobby's junkyard talking to thin air. There's no guarantee that the angel has his ears on, and he almost hopes he _doesn't_. It's one thing if Cas can't hear his prayer, but it's another thing altogether if he _can_ and just decides to ignore it.

"Listen, man--" He pushes a hand through his hair, trying to get a grasp on the right words. "I don't know what you got yourself into, but if you're in trouble, you know where we are. I'm not saying I'm not pissed off, because I _am_ , but.." He trails off and shrugs, looking up at the blanket of stars hanging over his head. There's this weird feeling that comes to him, some inexplicable and irrational belief that one of those stars _is_ Cas, so he focuses on one at random, talks to it instead of the shells of broken cars littered all around him. It helps to make what he's doing feel a little less like a lost cause. "I can put that aside. Dean and me--we can _help_ you, Cas, and you should let us. I'm not going to pretend to understand what was rollin' around in your head when you flew the coop. Maybe you're trying to protect us, maybe you're just a heartless bastard, I don't know. Hell, maybe all that Grace you've been stockpiling blasted your ass to the moon already, but, uh..."

Sam takes a breath. The corners of his mouth twitch into a sad smile. "On the off chance that you're actually listening, I want you to know that you're tearing my brother apart in a big, bad way. So if your plan was to protect us--protect _him_ \--you failed. _Miserably_. To tell you the truth, I'm so disgusted by trying to clean up the mess you left I can't even _think_ straight. But you know what? I'll still fight for you. I didn't want to, at first, but Dean was right. You're family, Castiel, and I _gotta_ believe that means something to you. Otherwise--" He can't bring himself to say it, can barely even _think_ about the possibility of one of their most trusted allies just tossing them aside like it's nothing, so he just shakes his head.

"Cas, _please_. If you ever really gave a damn about either of us, you'd come back, or...or give us a sign, at least. _Something_." He stands there in silence for another ten minutes, but no reply comes down from the pearly gates. It's pointless to hope for one--even on good days, Cas took his sweet ass time answering them--but he hoped nonetheless. Because he's _fucking_ _stupid_.

"... _Whelp_." It comes out like a sigh and sounds like resignation. He looks around at the junkyard again, one last time, like the angel might _actually_ be standing there, ready to be noticed so he can say his gravelly _hello_ and take the asskicking Sam's itching to hand him. But no, still nothing, there's just piles of gutted cars. "At least I tried."

He heads back for the house, wondering why he even bothered. His heart's just as heavy, his brother's just as fucked up, and Castiel's just as gone.

Said brother is currently still wide awake in the living room when Sam walks in, clicking away on his laptop. He's not sure when Dean actually slept last, but he knows it's been a couple days at least. He watches him work from the doorway and bites down on the urge to nag him about it. Hunters run on exhaust all the time. Sam himself can run on four hours every couple of nights and still be at the top of his game, he can snap out of a deep sleep and switch to fight mode in a fraction of a nanosecond, but he doesn't like the way Dean keeps moving around. He seems jittery, keyed-up, unfocused, coiled _way_ too fucking tight.

"Catch a case?" Sam asks. A job would probably do them both some good--take their minds off Cas, let them stretch their legs. Plus, Dean might relax a little once he gets to gank something and _jesusfuck_ , does he need to right now.

"Yeah."

"Banshee? Pack of werewolves?"

No answer. Dean doesn't even look up.

"C'mon, man, don't--"

"It's a fuckin lead on Cas!" Dean practically _yells_ it at him, like he's annoyed that he could possibly be so oblivious, and spins his laptop around. " _Look_!"

Sam moves closer and bends down. It's an article dated yesterday, something about an unexplained disaster in the Ozarks, but he doesn't bother to read the text. The accompanying photographs are all he needs.

" _Holy shit_ ," he breathes.

Any angel's wingspan is pretty impressive, even the grunts can look pretty intimidating when they start flashing their feathers, but the imprint in the snowcaps that the pictures captured is fucking _massive_.

"How far would you say that reach is?" Dean asks, "What, 'bout..a hundred feet? At _least_?"

"Probably closer to two."

Dean lets out a low whistle. "Gotta be real tough to lug those things around."

"Hang on..." Sam leans in further and zooms in on the first picture, his brows furrowed. "Do they look...kind of.." He vaguely waves his hand in the air, struggling to describe it, ".. _off_ , maybe? Besides being way too big, I mean."

His brother nudges him out of the way to get a better look. The angel's feathers made deep grooves in the perfect surface of the snow, almost like the imprint of a boot, but it's an irregular sort of pattern, like more than a handful of them are missing. Add that to the impression of the wings themselves, knobbly and uneven, and Sam gets the sinking feeling that whoever left the track was pretty far up a shit creek and didn't think to bring a paddle.

 _"Son of a bitch_ ," Dean whispers.

Sam turns, takes one look at him, and claps a hand on his shoulder. "Go load up."

*

Castiel's return to himself is slow, gradual. At first, all he knows are colors--not _dreams_ , not exactly, just a kaleidoscope of hues that start to overtake the blackness he's settled into. Rust-reds and forest greens, colors that are as familiar to him now as the vessel he occupies. Colors of his home away from home, colors of the souls he's laid everything down to preserve.

 _Hello_ , he tells the orbs, and he watches them float around the absence within him. Dean wants to stay close to his center, close to the place where Castiel is still recognizable, still _Cas_. Sam flits from one edge of the black void to the other, curious despite his caution, observing the fugue.

Cas wants to reach out, cradle the rough-around-the-edges sphere of Dean Winchester in his hands, soothe away the grey rot that marrs the _green_ of him and turns it dull and dark. He wants to tuck him under one of his wings, broken and grotesque as they've become, and keep him there forever, keep him safe, spare him all the horror of his own humanity. He aches to do it, but Dean is fragile, his soul is a volatile thing, and his very touch would surely break him.

And so he turns his back.

 _Leave_.

He doesn't need his eyes--physical or psychic--to know that Dean's brightness flickers in response. He can feel it: the confusion, the loss, the need, the splotches of parasitic grey hurt that eat away a little more and take another little part of him. Sam's soul drifts closer. He can sense the change in his brother, too, and in true Winchester fashion, he's trying to heal the damage.

Cas faces them again, watches the spheres of their true selves interact. They draw from each other, always have, and Castiel draws from them in turn. It feels wrong to do so--he shouldn't lean on them, doesn't deserve to--and there's something voyeuristic about seeing them and their brotherhood in the purest sense, as if he's intruding on a very private thing he has no business witnessing. He wishes he could stop, but despite his most determined efforts, he's never been able to close himself off from the boys. He's too weak. He needs them.

If there's one saving grace to this exchange, it's that neither of the Winchesters will remember it. They don't know they're here, or that they've been here before. Souls are labyrinths, they keep certain things hidden in the subconscious, they repress in the interest of self-preservation or twist memories to make them more bearable. Castiel knows the right string to pull to help them wipe the slate, he's done it without hesitation more times than he could possibly count, and he does it just as readily now.

Sam's soul disappears at once, but Dean's lingers. It takes a considerable amount of effort for Cas to bat him away with the mangled remains of his wings--they're almost useless, stripped down to raw threads of weeping, cosmic energy--but the light of the righteous man finally fades out, and Castiel is alone in the absence once again.

The waking world comes back soon after. His temples are throbbing, there's a dull ache behind his eyes, and his front is splattered with blood. When rubs at his nose, his hand comes back streaked red.

 _Oh_.

At least it's _his_ blood, not someone else's. Perhaps that isn't the purest of silver linings, considering the sheer force of the flow, but he'll take it. He loosens his tie enough to slip it off and folds it into a neat rectangle, then tilts his head back and presses it to his face as a makeshift gauze to slow the nosebleed down while he tries to take stock of his current predicament.

Cas doesn't know where he is or how he got here, but he's sitting in a desert and his wings feel impossibly heavy. That's cause for concern, _lots_ of it. Angel wings are an abstract concept, only visible when his kind intend for them to be seen, when they call them from a dimension that humans refer to as the ozone layer--or when they die. They're _energy_ , and that energy can't fully manifest here on Earth, not in a physical sense.

And yet he can feel them, spanning far too wide and throwing an ugly shadow into the sand. They _itch_ , too, from the very tips right down to where they join above his shoulder blades. How is that even possible? He groans and tries to stand, makes it to his knees, then pitches forward flat on his face with a soft ' _oof_!'. Oh, well. Can't be helped, he supposes.

" _Listen, man_ \--" Sam's voice is a welcome relief from the constant voices yammering away in his head. He closes his eyes and directs all of his focus on it. Most of the prayer sounds garbled, incomprehensible, but Castiel listens anyway. It's comforting, even if he can't understand it.

 _This must be why mothers hum to their newborns,_ Cas thinks, _It's so nice_.

As fried as his brain is, he can only make out a few things. He hears _Dean_ and _help_ and _let_ _us,_ he hears _Grace_ and _protect_ and _heartless_ and _Cas_ , **_please_**.

"Can't," he murmurs as his eyes jitter around rapidly under his closed lids. "I belong to them now. Wings hurt. I'm sleepy. Tell Dean I said--" Another absence swoops down before he can get his thought out. That's fine, though. Sam can't hear his reverse-prayer anyway.

*

The boys were so caught up in getting on the road that they didn't bother to read about the Ozark incident, so Bobby does it for them while Sam drives and Dean sleep-grumbles from the back seat. Sam keeps stealing glances in the rearview mirror, like he's waiting for his brother to suddenly wake up and nosedive off the deep end. Bobby keeps catching it out of the corner of his eye, and for a while he just bites his tongue, but a man can only be annoyed for _so_ long before he's fighting the urge to punch to the thing he's annoyed by.

"Quit mama-henning and keep your eye on the road," he tells Sam, "Dean's been runnin' on empty for days, and this damn car puts him out better'n _booze_. He prob'ly ain't wakin' up for a good while."

Sam glances towards the grizzled old grump, and then he sighs and focuses on the road. "What happened out there?"

Bobby shrugs. "S'far as I can gather, folks heard a high-pitched ringing sound, and then all hell broke loose. Different reports have different numbers, but there's a lot of casualties, and some of 'em died bloody. Sure as shit _sounds_ like one of the holy rollers, but.." He sighs, pulls his worn-out baseball cap off to rub his scalp. "The wing imprint's throwin' me for a loop."

"Yeah, I know. _Lucifer_ doesn't even have wings like that."

Bobby puts his hat back on and runs a hand down his face. "You think it's Cas?"

Sam swallows hard. "I really hope not."

"Cas's wings ain't like this, though, I've seen 'em."

"He...might be full of nuke right now."

" _Might_?"

"Crowley said Cas is taking the rest of the GodSquad's mojo. I thought he was bullshitting, but.." He trails off with a sort of ' _my_ _bad_ ' gesture. "Starting to look like he actually told the truth, for once."

Bobby stares at him with wide eyes. "You gotta be shittin' me." He's not sure what's harder to believe--the fact that Cas could possibly do something so drastic, or the fact that the mothercunting _King of Hell_ actually might've had a moment of honesty without being prompted via rigorous torture. If Crowley offered up that little tidbit so easily, it meant one of two things: either he was in on it and wanted to see Dean lose his shit, or he was getting nervous and wanted the boys to put a stop to whatever was going on so he could save his own hide. And if he was _nervous_ , that means he knows he doesn't have the muscle to take Cas down outright.

" _Balls_.." He mutters.

Sam nods. "The thing that's messin' me up is..Okay, so let's say the thing in the mountains _was_ Castiel's doing. If so, what's he doing it for? Why go to all that trouble just for kicks?"

"He wouldn't. Cas might be an idiot, but he ain't a power-tripper. He's an angel that walks among _humans_ , he's already at the top of the food chain. He wouldn't set the house on fire just to get rid of a fly or two." _There's gotta be one_ mean _motherfucker in the valley_ , Bobby thinks. He doesn't have to say it, because he can tell Sam's already reached the same conclusion just by watching his face.

Neither of them are looking forward to finding out who--or _what_ \-- that mean motherfucker is.

*

Dean dreams of better days, of Cas riding shotgun in the Impala with that weird quarter-smile on his face while he listens to him hum along to the radio (terribly off-key, but Cas never seems to mind, never makes fun of him the way Sammy does). He turns to look at the angel, flashes a big shit-eating grin, and launches into a god-awful rendition of _Don't Fear The Reaper_ over the Metallica song drifting from the speakers.

He loves it when he can actually get him laughing. It's such a rare thing, really--most days, he'd have better luck teaching the car how to do her own repairs than coaxing a smile out of the guy, but this is a _good_ dream and the sound Cas makes feels nothing short of victory.

He dreams of feathers he can't see but knows are there. They feel like lazy summer breezes as they caress his face. He reaches out, tries to touch them back, but never quite manages to find one under his fingertips.

He dreams he's sitting on a park bench with his head tipped back to let the sunlight soak in, but it doesn't come _close_ to making him feel as warm the sound of rustling wings to his left does. He doesn't have to look over; he knows that Cas is there, perched at his side.

"Hello, Dean."

"Don't." He tells the angel. There's no anger in his voice, no abandonment issues knocking around in his head, all he feels is contentment and peace. None of this is real--he _knows_ that--but he still needs it. "You're gonna ruin the moment. Just shut up and let me have this."

Cas lets out a soft chuckle. "Alright."

He dreams of battlefields, standing back-to-back with the angel as they fight their way through hordes of monsters, and he feels fucking _invincible_. Nothing can even come _close_ to touching them, he knows it better than he knows the inner workings of his own heart. It's almost effortless. They move in perfect sync, they fit together like they were made for it, warriors that need eachother every bit as much as they need a cause to fight for.

_Stab. Slash. Fall back. Keep going._

Of all the scenes Dean's brain thinks up when he's asleep, this is his favorite.

"Body count's up to five hundred, buddy," he calls over his shoulder, grinning as he yanks his knife from an unfortunate demon's eye socket.. "You better get your ass in gear if you don't wanna lose."

"I never agreed to a wager in the first place," Cas reminds him, but there's amusement in his voice. "Besides--" he lays his hand on the closest demon and burns it out of the meatsuit. "This one makes five-oh- _two_ for me."

"If I were you, I'd do more smiting and less shit-talking."

Cas laughs. "It's okay, Dean, we can't _all_ be winners."

They press their backs up against each other to rest while demons circle all around.

"You're a dick sometimes," Dean says, his chest heaving as he pants for breath. "You know that?"

"You might've mentioned it a time or two."

"C'mon."

Just like that, they pull apart and leap back into the fray. Dean runs another demon through, throws it down, goes in for the kill on another.

And then he's on the park bench again, basking under that same perfect, clear sky. "..Cas?"

"My apologies, Dean, but we need to talk."

"I told you not to ruin this, man," Dean says, and he can't help how his voice wavers or how his hand reaches over to grab Castiel's shoulder and latch on.

"I'm sorry," Cas says quietly. "It had to be done."

" _Bullshit_! You don't have to do _anything_!" His chest feels tight, and there's an ache inside of him, and all at once he understands that this is _real_ Cas, _actual_ Cas, not some conjured illusion of him from his subconscious. "You  _ruined_ it, man, you--"

Dean wakes up at that exact moment, right as he puts his fist through the car window.

*

When Castiel comes out of his haze a second time, all he sees is polished dress shoes in front of him. He looks up, squinting in the harsh Arizona sun, and manages to get his clumsy fingers around the handle of his angel blade before he asks, "Why are you here?" Well, _tries_ to ask, anyway--he's got sand and blood packed so far down his throat that the words come out in a pathetic gurgle. He sputters and coughs, spits out a glob of red-tinted, viscous sediment.

"Well, isn't _that_ attractive," Crowley says, his voice equal parts amused and disgusted. He rolls Cas onto his back with his foot and watches him with a dull kind of interest. The angel blade flashes in the sunlight, but he doesn't bother to take it from him. There's no need. Castiel can barely move, let alone attack.

"How did you find me?" The angel manages to ask.

"I'm not at liberty to discuss my wicked ways just now." He sounds almost bored, like he's heard the question so many times it's become mind-numbing.

"What do you want?"

"Welfare check." Crowley's sarcasm is palpable. "Wanted to see how my old friend was holding it together, seeing as he's got half the bloody angel race writhing inside him and all. Can't be terribly pleasant."

"We aren't friends," Cas says through clenched, crimson-stained teeth.

"Color me wounded." The demon rolls his eyes and crouches down for better inspection.

"What. Do you. _Want_?"

He smirks down at him and prods one of the horrible masses that used to pass as a wing. It sends an agony Cas has never known all the way to his hair follicles, but he clamps his lips together to keep the scream contained.

" _Huh_." Crowley says, fascinated. "Never saw them for real before. They're.." he pokes again, and Castiel tries to move it away, pull it closer to his body. It only shivers and lays still. "Well, _hideous_."

"Leave me be," the angel tries to command, but it comes out sounding weak and pathetic.

"Don't worry. I'm going to do you a favor. That's what friends are for, right?" His face splits into a wide, awful grin as he takes the blade away from him with almost no resistance to speak of, and then he buries it into Cas's chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit just got real.


	3. In the Bottle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, lemme just say that formatting all of this on a tablet is a monumental pain in the ass, but I'm one dedicated mofo.  
> Totally flying by the seat of my pants on this fic and just praying I don't end up hitting a wall tbh. If you notice any plotholes at some point, lemme know so I can go back and fix it.  
> Anyway, have some manpain, because I'm awful and like breaking Dean's heart.

Dean lurches out of the back seat and vomits in the ditch. Sam rushes after him with Bobby close behind and lays a hand on his brother's shoulder as he retches, and _christ_ , Dean's damn near _hysterical_. He's doubled over, crying in deep, wrenching sobs--Sam feels them under his palm, violent and unrelenting, and he throws his arm around him to hold him against his side just in case his legs decide to give out. "Dean! Hey, what's--what's wrong?"

He doesn't get any reply to speak of, but he _does_ get puked on. _Oh, thanks for that_ , he almost tells him, _super descriptive_. Sam looks over at Bobby, only to see his own dumbfounded concern mirrored back at him. "Uh, a little help would be great right about now."

"You're on your own til the fluids stop spewin', boy, I gotta draw a line _somewhere_."

Dean sinks to his knees despite Sam's best efforts to keep him up, his breath coming in harsh, ragged gasps. " _Cas_!"

He crouches down (right in a puddle of eau du stomach acid, god fucking _damn_ it) and takes hold of his brother by the wrist to inspect the damage to his hand. Nothing looks broken, but it's badly bruised and already starting to swell. He sighs and plucks a sliver of glass out of the scrape running along the ridges of his knuckles. "We'll get to Cas, okay? Lemme just--"

"No!"

Bobby hands him a bandanna. "Here, wrap it up and--"

" _No_!" Dean says, louder this time.

Sam looks up at him, into his eyes, and for a second the pure _anguish_ in them makes him forget how to breathe. He's seen his brother go through a _lot_ of pain and laugh it off, he's seen him thrive under pressure and he's seen him stumble under the impossible weight of it, he's seen him cry and yell and rage, but he's _never_ seen him like this. He watches with a creeping sense of terror as the strongest man he's ever known starts screaming.

"Cas is _dead_ , Sammy! He's _dead_ , Cas is _dead_ , he's--"

He tries to pull him in for a hug, desperate to offer some kind of comfort. Dean won't let him.

 _"Don't touch me!"_ He snarls, wrenching his way free. " _Cas is dead! He's gone, he's dead, he's DEAD!"_

"You can't _know_ that!" Reasoning with his brother is probably a lost cause, but he gives it his best shot. It's the only thing he can think to do. "You were _asleep_ , Dean, it was just a nightmare! That's all it was! Dammit, _look_ at me!"

He doesn't think Dean even hears him. He just keeps on screaming, wild-eyed and trembling all over, like everything inside of him just got cast down into hellfire. Sam sighs, runs his hand through his hair. "Man, don't make me drop you. You've gotta _calm down--"_

_"--DEAD HE'S DEAD CAS IS DEAD--"_

_Plan B, then,_ Sam thinks. He lays him out cold with a single punch and looks down to check his work, make sure he wasn't just dazed, before he turns to Bobby. "Help me get him back in the car."

*

Between the puke smell, the busted glass, and the dent in the driver's side, the Impala's going to need a _lot_ of TLC whenever his brother gets his wits about him. Sam would do it, but he knows better than to try. Dean's an _I-want-it-done-right-so-I'll-do-it-myself_ kind of person, especially when it comes to his baby, and working on the car's always been his version of therapy. Bobby helps him tarp up the window as a temporary fix after they haul Dean into the motel room, and then Sam immediately jumps in the shower to get the reek of vomit off.

Cas really _could_ be dead right now, but he doesn't want to believe that. Everything inside of him wants to fight against the very _idea_ of it. _Dean had a bad dream, that's all. He cares so much about Cas that it just freaked him out. That's all it was. Just a night terror._

But all the logical conclusions in the world can't still the uneasy twisting in his gut as he stands with his head tilted up towards the shower's stream. _Yeah, and what if it wasn't?_ Some awful, nagging voice pipes up, _What if Cas went kamikaze and it broke Dean's bank? What then? What are you gonna do?_

Sam shakes his head, like he's trying to physically dislodge that train of thought from his brain stem. He's not turning on the doomsday sirens just yet. There's no proof one way or the other, so he might as well err on the side of optimism. _Somebody_ has to.

By the time he gets out of the bathroom, Dean's awake and upright. He's holding a beer bottle to the ugly bruise starting to color the side of his face and he's got this look on his face like someone whizzed in his Wheaties, but at least he's _lucid_.

"Sorry about that." Sam tells him with a sheepish half-smile, "You were out of your mind for a second there, I didn't know what else to do."

"S'fine."

"Where's Bobby?"

"Beer run."

Sam frowns and pulls up a chair by the bed, then reaches out. "Gimme your hand."

Dean won't look at him. He brings the bottle to his mouth and takes a drink, but makes no move to do as his brother asked.

"Dean--"

"Stop it. My hand's fine, _I'm_ fine."

 _Bullshit_. "Are we gonna talk about what happened back there?"

"Nope," Dean says. "Don't even 'member anything, so there's nothin to talk about." And then, in the least subtle diversion to have ever been attempted: "Good _god_ , I stink."

Before he can protest, Dean's pulling a change of clothes out of his duffel and heading for the bathroom. Sam just lets him go, if only because he really _does_ stink to the highest of heavens.

As soon as he hears the door click shut, he sighs and drops his head into his hands.

 _Fuck_.

*

Dean doesn't talk much the next morning. He's drunk by eight a.m., _wasted_ by eleven, chain-smoking by the car as he calls Castiel's old number just to hear the voicemail greeting. _I'm being pathetic,_ he tells himself over and over, _I'm being stupid and this ain't helping anything._

He can't quite bring himself to give a rat's ass, though. Cas is gone now, and he'll wallow as much as he fuckin pleases.

_"This is Castiel. If it's an emergency, please leave a message. If not, text me instead. I like to text. Dean? Dean, how do I stop record--"_

It still makes him smile a little, even as his chest tightens. He hangs up and calls right back.

_"This is Castiel. If it's an emergency..."_

Dean listens again and again while he dumps beer after beer on the wounds inside of him to make them go away--or maybe just numb them for a while, at least--but there ain't enough booze in the whole world to get the job done.

He wants to be angry. He wants to rant and rave, he wants to pick a fight just to have something to hit. He wants to bring Cas back so he can _personally_ rip him to fucking ribbons and he wants to wish he'd never met the stupid son of a bitch, but he can't do any of that.

So he drinks instead. He drinks, and he listens to Castiel's rumbly voice, and he stares up at the clouds to make it easier to hold the tears back.

Sammy eventually comes to sit with him and offers another beer.

"Thanks."

They're both silent for a long while. Dean stares down at his hand, studying his battered flesh. He tries to make a fist and ends up splitting the scab open. Doesn't hurt much, though, so he just watches a tiny bead of red collect in the gap of the wound. It reminds him of when he used to play bloody knuckles with all the other idiot tough guy outcasts in the school cafeteria.

"I'm sorry," Sam tells him quietly.

The floodgates are threatening to burst, but he refuses to let them. He has another sip of beer and shrugs. "I prob'ly woulda knocked your ass out, too, if I s'in the same spot."

"That's not what I mean."

"I know," Dean says.

"I miss him."

He laughs, and it sounds so fucking bitter. "I've _been_ missin him." He rubs at his eyes, struggling to maintain the last little shred of his anti-chickflick-moments facade. "I just can't figure out where it went so _wrong_ , you know? He was _ours_."

Sam hesitates, then squeezes his shoulder. "Whatever happened, you're not at fault."

"Didn't say I was."

"You don't have to."

Dean scrunches his eyes as tight as he can get them. A tear rolls out anyway, and he furiously scrubs it off his cheek. _Wow, Winchester,_ the cruel, self-loathing part of him hisses, _way to be a fuckin man._

And then another thought comes to him, unwanted and unbidden: _Oh god, if Dad could see me now..._

He's never been so relieved by the knowledge of his own father's death, so comforted by it.

"It's not your fault, Dean. None of this is on you."

"I shoulda stopped him, Sammy. I shoulda made him stay. I shoulda...been nicer, maybe, shoulda made him feel like he could come to us for help."

"He knew he could come to us," Sam says. "I think he just wanted to keep us off the battlefront."

" _What_ battlefront? Nothin's _happened_!" The anger starts to bleed back into his voice, and he welcomes it because it's easier. Rage is simple. Grief is more complicated, more painful. "If the end of the world's comin and the sky's about to fall, shouldn't there be...I dunno, _somethin_? Bad omens, black clouds, fuckin fire-breathin dragons? If there's somethin out there, we'd know by now, don't you think?"

"So why do you think he did it?"

 _"Because he's a fuckin prick, that's why!"_ Dean throws his empty bottle against the motel bricks and watches it shatter. The sound isn't quite as satisfying as he'd hoped. "He's a mothercunting fuckwit of biblical proportions, and he doesn't know his fuckin asshole from his dickhole! He just...just _left_ me, and he died for _nothing_ , and I swear on the graves of everyone I've ever given the _slightest shit_ about that I'll never forgive him for it." He's crying hard now, but he doesn't notice, mistakes the way his shoulders shake as a product of his fury.

This time, when Sam pulls him into a hug, he allows it. It's the final blow. All of that pent-up rage just evaporates, but it leaves too much devastation inside him as it goes. He clenches his good fist into the back of his little brother's flannel shirt and weeps.

*

"You sure about this?" Bobby asks.

"I don't want him working the case right now." Sam answers, "And I sure as hell don't want him left to his own devices."

 _Kid's got a point,_ Bobby thinks. Even so, he doesn't like the idea of staying behind. There's way too much uncertainty here--for all they know, Sam could be running headlong into the mother of all clusterfucks. Not to mention the fact that Dean's gonna go absolutely _bugshit_ when he's slept off his blackout and realizes the investigation party started without him, but they don't have time for him to recover from his meltdown first, and certainly can't take the chance that he might do something asinine while he's still in the thick of it.

"Lemme go instead," he tells Sam, even though he knows it's pointless. "I'll ask around, scope the place out--"

"I got this. Just make sure he doesn't try to follow me or slit his wrist or something."

"Aw, that ain't even _funny_ ," Bobby says.

"I know." the youngest Winchester tells him as he busies himself with zipping up his duffel bag. "That's why I'm not laughing."

He lets out a heavy sigh. "You know better'n to think Dean would do somethin' like that. He's hurtin' bad, sure, but he's a tough son of a bitch, an' it wouldn't kill ya to have a _little_ bit of faith in him."

Sam slings his bag over his shoulder and heads for the door. "I'll let you know when I get there. Hide the keys so he won't come after me, don't let him go overboard with the booze. I'll be back in a couple days."

"Yeah, sure thing." He runs a hand down his face, torn between annoyance and being sort of offended in Dean's honor. Annoyance wins out. It ain't like he's a christing _toddler_ , for fuckssake, and Bobby Singer figured his babysitting days were long done and over with. "I'm sure you put a nannycam in the teddybear, so I'll be extra sure he eats his vegetables and put 'im in bed by eight."

Sam cracks a ghost of a smile. "Just don't have any boys over."

"Get outta here, ya little shit," he grumbles. "Just be careful, and call me the second there's even the _suggestion_ of trouble."

"Will do."

Once he leaves, Bobby looks over at Dean. He's out cold, laying on top of the blankets as opposed to underneath them, his brow furrowed as he navigates whatever terrible shit he dreams about. This whole situation feels bad, but the utter helplessness that closes around his heart when he looks at the unconscious body on the bed just ramps the _oh-shit_ factor up to a degree he didn't think was even _possible_.

Something tells him that whatever shitstorm might be brewing is going to get much, much worse. Call it Hunter's intuition, call it a finely-tuned sixth sense for when some kinda fuckery's fixin' to go even further downhill. Doesn't matter _what_ name you give it, they're screwed either way.

*

Someone's calling out. He's floating in nothingness, aware of little more than pitch black itself. He wouldn't mind keeping it that way, were he able to mind _anything_ , but he no longer has the capacity to think. He's part of the cosmos, he _belongs_ to it, and he knows nothing else.

The calling continues. It brings a piece of him back--the tiniest of shards, a little speck of awareness.

" _Cas!_ "

Is that his name, or someone else's? Does he even _have_ a name?

_"CAS! CAS!"_

There's a pinprick of recognition somewhere in him. Yes, it's his, that name belongs to him. But why would he be hearing it _now_?

_"Cas!!"_

_I'm Cas_ , he thinks, but he doesn't know how he's even able to do so, considering he's currently little more than a wavelength in the atmosphere. He's _dead_ , he isn't _supposed_ to think.He's supposed to just float

_(take us home)_

and remain unaware of the fact that he ever existed or what he did with that existence. So _why_?

_(we saved you so let us out now we kept you alive and now you must repay us)_

_(set us free)_

_(you owe us)_

So many voices. He doesn't like it, doesn't like how they all speak in unison. It's a crowd of zealots chanting their mantra, but that crowd is _inside_ of him, and he can't remember why.

_"CASTIEL! CAS, PLEASE. PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE CAS PLEASE!"_

_Oh_. This voice is different. Familiar. Warm. It's gravel and grit and the smell of whiskey and the sensation of an embrace. It's a voice he never got tired of, even when it sang badly on purpose. _Dean_.

_(repay us Castiel)_

_(stop it Castiel you have to stop)_

For all of the turmoil inside of him, all the cries and pleading, it's _still_ easier to ignore than a prayer from Dean Winchester.


	4. In the Devil's Den

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I mentioned that I'm flying by the seat of my pants on this one?  
> Fuck.

The vessel coughs up a spray of blood, much to the King's annoyance _,_ and then it lays still. Its twisted wings start to glow, brighter and brighter, and Crowley has to throw an arm up to shield his eyes. When the light finally fades, he looks down at the empty husk in the sand with something close to hope on his face, but that hope doesn't last long.

 _Bollocks._  

When angels die, they don't just go quietly. Their wings don't just _disappear_ without a trace, as Castiel's have--that would be too mundane for the flashy nature of God's little grunts. No, they've got _style_ , even in death. They go out in a literal blaze of glory, a burst of power hot enough to scorch the outline of their feathers into the earth and render the ground barren for centuries. It's as if they create their own headstones, which strikes the demon as fucking _hilarious_ considering the fact that nobody ever mourns them, not even Daddy Dearest.

Crowley jerks the blade out of Castiel's chest and tosses it aside. He figured it wouldn't be enough to kill the little shit _forever_ , but he'd kinda hoped it really would be that easy, considering the sorry state he was in. No matter. The King of Hell has quite a few backup plans. He always does. 

But first, he has to wait for his feathered friend to come back to earth.

Crowley stands up and brushes his hands on his trousers, as if he'd touched something decidedly unpleasant. _For fuckssake, how much time do you need to find your way back from the bloody afterlife??_

Apparently, it takes precisely thirty-six hours.

When Cas comes back to his vessel, it's with a long, _dramatic_ gasp. Crowley fights the urge to roll his eyes and loses.

"Feeling better?" The demon asks.

Castiel glares up at him with murder and divine fury burning in his eyes. "You tried to _kill me_!"

"Oh, don't be a ninny. I didn't kill you so much as restore you to your factory settings."

"...what are you talking about?"

Crowley sighs. _This is going to be like trying to explain the concept of rocket science to a spider monkey._ "Your vessel was going to explode. All I did was loosen the pressure valve to ensure that didn't happen. You _are_ , if you'll notice, able to keep those tricky wings away."

The angel sits up and cranes his neck to look around. Sure enough, the wings are stowed away in the ozone, but they've left their enormous mark in the sand. "I never asked for your help."

He scoffs. "You've been spending far too much time around Dean."

The name _does_ something to Cas, but he can't quite interpret what. He watches those big blue eyes get even bigger, then Castiel's springing to his feet like he wasn't completely out of commission the day before. There's something wild in his expression, something that looks a touch too crazed for the demon's liking.

Crowley watches him carefully. "I believe someone deserves a thank you, yeah?"

Castiel bares his teeth in a feral snarl. "You're not getting a pat on the back for being a _cunt_."

It completely throws the King off his game. Crowley can count the number of times he's heard him curse ( _badly_ , at that--Cas has always used swears the way a nine year old does when Mummy's out of earshot) on a single hand, and yet he spits the word out with seething, unabashed venom.

He stares at the angel for a moment, shoving down the uneasy feeling that starts working its way into his nerves. It's all he can do to keep from smoking out right then and there, but he's _Crowley_ , and he won't be outdone in a battle of words, especially by a halo-holder. "You suck the Winchesters' dicks with that mouth?"

"Do _you?_ "

"Only Dean's. And I make him beg first." He's playing with fire and he knows it, but this is every bit as fun as it is dangerous. He can't resist digging his claws into a pressure point, and if the vengeful look on Castiel's normally stoic face is anything to go by, he's certainly found one. It's fucking _delicious._ "What's the matter? Thought you were the only supernatural being that could charm him right out of his pants? Disappointed that your little profound bond doesn't apply to the dangly bits, perhaps?"

 _"Shut your mouth!"_   Cas rears back and slaps him hard enough to send little drops of blood down to the sand. His head rocks to the left. He spits out a tooth and laughs.

 "Still don't understand the concept of a joke, I see." Crowley wipes his lips with the back of his hand.

 "Why did you fix me?"

The King straightens his suit, one eyebrow quirked. "If you call yourself fixed, or are foolish enough to think I have the sort of power needed to do so, I'm afraid you may be more dense than I ever thought possible, and that's saying a _lot_. I simply.." He pauses, gives one of his little grins. "delayed the inevitable for a short time. You're still going to go supernova at some point, likely sooner rather than later."

"So why bother?"

Crowley sighs. "Are you really this stupid, or are you just fucking with me?

Castiel frowns and tilts his head. It's a perplexed expression, a small remnant of what he once was--a doofy, awkward, unbearably dense little fuck. "I don't--"

 _How can the Winchesters even_ stand _this moron?_   He wonders. "You think I want to see the world blow up any more than you do? Where's the bloody fun in that?"

The angel blinks. "Oh."

"Really? _That's_ the response you're going with?"

"What would you prefer?" Cas asks through gritted teeth. There's no trace of who he once was now--the bumbling idiot Crowley's come to know just…switches off, and once more he finds himself standing in front of something he's not familiar with, but he gets the impression it's something that can't fully stuff itself into a Castiel-sized box.

"Well, not for nothing, but I'm still waiting on a thank you." 

Cas surges forward and grabs him by the lapels. "I didn't smite you where you stand," he hisses. _"That_ is your thank you. Be grateful, _demon."_  

And then he's gone in a rush of wind and fluttering wings. His departure kicks up a rather impressive sandstorm, and Crowley's thrown back a good twenty feet from the sheer force of it. He struggles to his feet, squinting to keep grit out of his eyes, and tips his head back to shout up at the sky.

"YOU'RE WELCOME, ASSHOLE."

*

Truth be told, Sam doesn't want to be here. Following Cas's trail on his own feels every kind of wrong--like he's betraying his brother somehow--but _do what you gotta do_ is the Hunter gospel, and right now, what he's gotta do is get his ass to Arkansas and poke around the blast site. _Someone_ has to keep moving forward. The world can only ever afford to have one Winchester stuck treading quicksand at any given time. Hell, Dean would do the same thing in half a heartbeat if the roles were reversed.

Sam _knows_ it, but that doesn't make it any easier to leave him behind. It's hard to take off like this when your family needs you there with them, even if it's for the sake of the greater good. Everything inside of him is yelling _turn around, go back, you gotta pull Dean out of the fire,_ but this isn't the kind of thing that can be fixed with a bowl of chicken soup and a good talk--fuck, he's been trying that particular tactic for _weeks_ already--this is one of those situations where helping the wounded means leaving them on the ground while you haul ass to find the bandages.

He wonders if his dad ever grappled with leaving them behind when they were kids. Was it easy? Was it a relief to be without them? Did he stay up for days on end and agonize over it, or were they simply an afterthought?

Sam has no intention of abandoning Dean like their father did, but there _is_ a part of him that feels something close to relief about getting away from him for a while. He's disgusted with himself for it, but it's hard to look his brother in the eyes when he knows how much hurt's gonna be in them. He can't bear to watch Dean's downward spiral, can't bring himself to just sit around watching his big brother try to put out a forest fire with a shot of Jack.

But what he _can_ do is put on his bigboy pants, get his ass down to Devil's Den State Park, figure out what in the actual _fuck_ Cas got himself into, and then plan his next move accordingly.

The irony of investigating a biblical disaster located in a place literally called the Devil's-goddamn-Den certainly isn't lost on him, and it's setting off all kinds of warning bells. He doubts Lucifer has anything to do with the recent events—if he'd popped the cage, every Hunter in the _world_ would've gotten word by now—but it reeks of bad omens and shitstorms all the same.

The park itself's been closed since the day of the _whateverthefuck_ , and the first thing Sam notices when he gets out of the car is how _quiet_ it is. No birds despite the early morning sun, no breezes rustling through the trees, no burbling from the stream that runs out from the woods to his right. No _nothing._

 _I'm sure this_ totally _bodes well,_ he thinks. And then: _Jesus, Cas, what the fuck did you_ do?

He sighs and grabs the duffel out of the back seat. There's no telling whether or not this _was_ Castiel's doing, but if he's been sucking up all the angel mojo like Crowley said, he's probably the culprit. Hell, this shit could be what _killed_ him...if he's actually dead, anyway. Sam still has his doubts about that, even if Dean seems completely convinced.

He pulls a map out of his back pocket and takes a few minutes to look it over. Devil's Den spans an area of almost four miles, and trying to blindly stumble across the right trail up to the mountains isn't really his idea of a good time. The path seems more or less like a straight shot, thankfully, so he folds it up, shoves it back into his jeans, and sets off.

He only gets about halfway there before someone stops him.

*

Dean comes out of his stupor with one _mother_ of a headache. He sits up in bed and regrets it almost immediately—his brain feels like it's trying its best to liquify and leak out of every single orifice. He cringes and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“Mornin', princess,” Bobby says ( _much_ too loudly, if you ask Dean). “How you feelin'?”

He groans in response.

“Yeah, a violent bender'll do that to ya.”

“Can you _not?”_ Dean mumbles, his voice wavering as he struggles to hold back the bile crawling up into his throat. “Now ain't the time to add insult to injury.”

Bobby chuckles and brings him a bottle of aspirin. “Quit your bellyachin'. You got nobody to blame but yourself.”

“Fuck off.” He says in a dull, listless voice. He shakes four pills into his hand, swallows them dry, and leans back against the headboard with his eyes scrunched shut. “I don't think I've ever been this goddamn hungover in my fuckin _life_.”

“Yeah, prob'ly not.”

Even with his eyes closed, he can sense the amusement in Bobby's smile. _Fuckin sadist._ “What time is it? We gotta load up and head out once the Tylenol kicks in.”

Bobby clears his throat. “Yeah, uh...about that..”

Dean's eyes snap open, his hangover momentarily forgotten. “What?”

“Sam's already on his way there.”

“He went _off on his own?”_ He yells, “What the fuck _for?_ Why didn't you get off your ass an' _stop_ him? _”_

Bobby rolls his eyes. “Why don't ya just simmer down a little, drama queen? He _is_ a grown ass man, in case you forgot, and _someone_ had to stay here to make sure you didn't do somethin' stupid.”

“You get that I'm _also_ a grown ass man, right?”

“Son, you ain't gonna like hearin' this, but you _need_ to hear it..” Bobby sits down on the edge of the other bed and takes a breath. “You ain't exactly been in your right mind lately. Sam's scared to leave you alone, and I don't blame 'im. You're a _wreck.”_

As much as Dean wants to argue, he can't really deny it. Of _course_ he's a wreck. Cas _leaving_ was bad enough, but his death took something out of him, something precious. Problem is, he can't quite figure out what's missing now, let alone how to get it back. All he really knows is there's a gash somewhere inside of him that can't be stitched shut.

He doesn't know _how_ he knows that Cas is dead, but that isn't important. He's dead all the same.

Dean locks his jaw and looks away for a long moment, fighting the bitter tears threatening to spill over. “I should _be there_ , Bobby. It's...it's _Cas._ I--” He swallows hard, shakes his head, lets out a laugh that sounds a lot more like crying.

For a while, Bobby just watches him in silence. When he finally speaks, his voice is soft and gentle, like he's trying to comfort a wild horse as opposed to a hungover and emotionally fragile man. “We thought it'd be best for you to sit on the sidelines for a while.”

“ _You don't get to make that decision!”_

“You got no business workin' right now, Dean.”

“And _you_ got no business tellin me I fuckin _can't!”_ He snaps. “Sammy didn't even give half a rat's ass til a couple days ago, but _he_ gets to go? Meanwhile, I'm supposed to—what, exactly?--sit here on my hands an' let you hover over me? You're _not_ my fuckin _dad.”_

Bobby makes a sound like he just got the wind knocked out of him. It's a low blow, one Dean knows he'll apologize for later, but he's too mad to care at the moment.

“Yeah, you're right,” Bobby says, and he can sense the lengths he's going to in order to keep his tone even. “I'm not John. Unlike _him,_ I actually give a damn.”

Dean whips his head around to look at the old man, his eyes narrowed as he growls, “You fuckin' bastard.”

Bobby merely shrugs. “If you're gonna be an asshole, I'm gonna be one right back.” He stands and heads for the door. “Quit your bitchin' an' come help me fix up your fuckin' car.” He pauses and looks back at Dean. “Or just keep wallowin',since you seem to be havin' so much fun with it. Either way, you ain't leavin', so you might as well shut the hell up an' quit with the tantrums, you whiny little _fuck._ Sam might've let you act like a jackass, but it ain't flyin' with me.”

He slams the door behind him. Dean stares at it for a second, unmoving, his jaw locked tight.

And then he calls Sam.

...And calls again when it goes to voicemail.

And again.

And _again._

“God dammit, Sam..” He sighs and drops his phone on the bed. _Great._

*

“It's about time one of you fuckers showed!”

Sam comes to a complete halt mid-step. He _knows_ that voice, but he's not exactly pleased to hear it. _Fuckin' Metadouche._ He sighs, takes a breath to reign in the overwhelming urge to bash his own head against a tree _just_ so he doesn't have to listen to the little shitbag, and turns around to face him. “Kinda busy just now, man.”

“Oh, so you've heard the news? Took you long enough to get here, don't you think?”

“I'm just gonna walk away now,” Sam tells him. “I don't feel like dealing with your shit today.”

“I suppose not,” Metatron says with a haughty sniff. “What with Cas going nuclear and all.”

“Are you here for a reason, or did you just wanna run your mouth?”

“Of _course_ I'm here for a reason!” The angel has this wounded expression on his face, like Sam just told him his poetry sucks dick (it does). “I have information you'll want.”

“...Yeah? And?”

Metatron takes a step forward and stage-whispers, “He's taking everyone's Grace.”

“Yep.” Sam says, already turning to walk off.

“Wait! There's more to it!”

He pauses.

“Buuuuut...” Metatron says with one of his vile grins, “I'll only tell you on one condition.”

 _Fuck,_ Sam thinks, _not this bullshit again. “_ Name it.”

 


	5. In The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this while drunk and didn't read over it that thoroughly, but, uhh...yeah. Have some violence and whatnot.

“I'm not askin' for a whole lot, here.” Metatron says, his hands held up in a gesture meant to placate, but Sam knows better, knows enough about how the grimy little shitweasel works. His hands twitches as he wrestles with the idea of grabbing the angel blade he brought along and just killing him outright. He'd _do_ it, too, if he thought the fucker was bullshitting. He isn't, though, and Sam knows good and goddamn well _why._

If Cas is really going rogue, Metatron's going to be at the top of his list, which means Sam's got quite a bit of leverage here. Metatron's a clever little fuck, but if Cas gets it in his head to take him out, it certainly isn't gonna be a battle of wits. It'll be _bloody,_ and Metadouche doesn't have _nearly_ enough muscle to fight him off. They both know it, and in a weird way, it could actually work in the Winchesters' favor.

“Don't talk me in circles right now.” Sam tells the angel, and he manages to keep his voice even, but he looks Metatron right in the eye while he says it, allowing his hand to drift to the blade he's got poking from his backpack. The hardest part of this particular negotiation is gonna be to keep a straight face and resist the urge to just laugh at the fuckin' idiot, but he learned his poker face from his older brother, and it _never_ fails. “I don't have time for your shit,” he says calmly.

“Okay, okay!” Metatron squeaks. He takes a careful step backwards, like he fully expects an attack, and Sam has to fight really hard to keep from grinning. Metadouche doesn't know it, but he's playing into the Hunter's plan quite beautifully. “First off, you're not gonna get much further without me, so I'd keep that blade stowed if I were you.”

“What does that mean?”

The angel huffs, annoyed despite his fear. “It means you're gonna get about twenty or so paces before the smiting sickness starts to settle in. Do you like projectile vomiting, Sam? No? Yeah, that's what I thought.”

 _Shit._ Dean had mentioned how sick he'd gotten when he'd tried to investigate the blast site where the angels tried to take Amara down, but that was a while ago and it had completely slipped Sam's mind. It wasn't like him to forget such a vital piece of information, especially with Castiel and the entire universe hanging in the balance, but he'll beat himself up over it later. “So go scope the place out,” he says.

“Just like that?” Metatron whines. “No...no offering up anything to reward me for going through the trouble? It could be _dangerous_ up there, even for me!”

“It won't be _half_ as dangerous as standing in front of me right now, I can promise you that.” He makes another show of reaching for the blade, and the angel lets out another of his pathetic little whines.

“Wait, hang on!”

Sam tilts his head, brows arched, his hand paused in midair.

“If...I do this, you gotta take me back with you.”

He blinks, and his hand falls back down to his side. “..What?”

“Take me back with you! That way, if Castiel decides to come after me, I'll have you two asswipes to talk him out of it..or..or keep him distracted long enough for me to slip out, anyway.”

“You want us to be your fucking bodyguards?” Sam can't help himself—he starts laughing to the point of _tears_. “Oh, man, you have _no_ idea how fucking stupid you really are, do you?”

Metatron crosses his arms and huffs again, looking every bit the petulant child Sam's always envisioned him to be. “It's _not_ stupid, it's the best chance I've got to keep that rabid mongrel _off_ me!”

“Oh, _totally_ ,” Sam says, his face split by a grin that seems equal parts manic and sarcastic, “Except you're not factoring my brother into your little play for self-preservation. If I bring you back with me, Cas is gonna be the _least_ of your problems. I know you think I'll be able to reign Dean in, keep him in check so you get to keep your intestines, but..uh..” He busts out laughing again, nearly doubled over as his sides heave from the force of it. “That's where you fucked up, Metatron, 'cause I'd have better luck convincing him to audition for _ballerina school._ You think _Castiel's_ unhinged? Wait 'til you see what the fuck he did to _Dean.”_

“I could help with that.”

Sam straightens up. He's not smiling anymore—he's got his eyes narrowed, like he's trying to set the Scribe of God on fire with the power of his thoughts alone. The sad part? There was a time when he probably _could_ have, back when he was a blood junkie. It's been a while since he'd craved demon blood, craved the power, but he's watched Dean's struggle with booze long enough to understand that your addictions always come back at the weirdest, most inopportune fucking times, and you don't always have to act on that craving, even if everything inside of you begs for it...and even if _Dean_ himself doesn't put up much of a fight against the pull a bottle could have on him. Whatever. In the grand scheme of their lives, alcohol was probably the least dangerous of all their inner demons. “Help with what?”

“Dean.” Metatron tells him. “I can take all those abandonment issues and ball them up nice and tight, keep him from going completely mental.”

 _It's a little too goddamn late for that,_ Sam thinks. “There's always a catch to that kind of thing,” he says, “so I'm gonna go ahead and pass. I'll take my brother as-is, just as long as I don't have to deal with your bullshit.” He shoves the angel out of his way and continues up the path.

“You won't have him much longer, in that case.”

He freezes dead in his tracks, his shoulders tense. He slowly turns around to face Metatron once again, and he's not smiling anymore. He's got murder in his eyes, a smoldering rage that Crowley's hounds have even learned to fear. Hell hath no fury quite like a protective Winchester. It's what made the boys into the boogeymen that demons have nightmares about and the warriors that angels pray to never cross paths with. “What the fuck does that mean?”

The little prick just _shrugs_ , looking up at the branches overhead like he's no longer interested in Sam or in keeping most of his own limbs. “Oh, nothing. Go ahead, keep walking. See how far it gets you. Meanwhile, your brother's going to start making deals with devils, and you'll figure out the repercussions of those deals soon enough. Since you're so _smart_ and all.”

Sam takes a deep, slow breath. “Okay, you know what?” He takes a few steps towards Metatron, watches him scrabble to maintain a safe distance in response. _Good._ He _wants_ him to be nervous, wants to see the exact moment when the little cockroach's blood starts running cold. “Here's how the next thirty seconds are gonna go down, Metatron--”

“You're supposed to be the _logical_ one!” The Scribe wails.

“You're going to tell me everything you know,” he continues, finally sliding the angel blade free from his pack. He twirls it in his palm with an easy sort of flourish (a trick Castiel taught him way back, when they'd both needed a distraction from whatever black cloud happened to be hanging over their heads at the time). “You're going to tell me what Cas might or might _not_ be up to, and then you're gonna explain just how in the blue-eyed _fuck_ you think you could possibly help my brother, and then--”

Sam freezes up, and his tough guy swagger comes crashing down because suddenly Cas is _here_ , stupid trench coat and all, he's standing behind Metatron with his shoulders hunched in true Castiel fashion, only there's something about the way he _stares_ at Sam that seems wrong, seems threatening in its own right.

“Cas, don't!” He yells, but it doesn't do any good. Metatron doesn't even get a chance to turn around. Castiel snakes his arm over the Scribe's shoulder and wrenches his face upwards, then drags his own blade across his throat in a smooth, eerily precise motion.

“Cas!” Sam tries again. “Castiel--”

“Stop it.” Cas says softly. He allows Metatron to fall to the earth and sends Sam flying into a nearby tree with a 'shoo' gesture.

“Dammit, Cas, _you_ stop!” He's pinned tight, but it doesn't stop him from fighting to break out of whatever hold he's in. “Whatever's goin' on, we can _fix it!”_

“We don't care,” Castiel says. His voice is devoid of emotion or inflection. He watches Metatron scurry to his hands and knees, and then brings his foot down _hard_ , right in the middle of the Scribe's back. “We do what has--”

Metatron shrieks in agony. “Stop! Stop, please!”

“--to be done.”

Even at this distance, Sam can hear the sickening crunch of bones. He shudders and looks away, teeth clenched, unable to lift a single fucking finger to stop his closest friend from snapping one of his own kind bit by bit.

“We all hated you, anyway. You're just a pretentious, useless little shitbag. We don't even _need_ your fucking Grace, you know that? We..just..well, watching you die is sort of at the top of Castiel's Make-A-Wish list, and we figured we'd allow him this before the end.”

Sam's eyes snap up. “End of what?”

“Don't interrupt,” Cas says in his cold new robot-voice. “We're having a moment with our brother.”

He rolls Metatron onto his back and watches blood bubble out of his mouth with mild interest. “Mortals really are such delicate things.”

“Just kill me! Please, just--”

“No. We're going to watch you suffer and succumb to your injuries. It may take quite a while for the internal bleeding to get the job done, but it'll be time well spent.”

“Please!” Metatron whimpers, his breath coming in pathetic sobs. “Please, Castiel, just--”

“ _Enough!”_ Sam butts in again. “Cut this shit out, man! You can't just--”

Cas raises his head and turns his dead-eyed stare onto him, and his throat closes up. He'd almost prefer a glare, a sneer, _some_ kind of emotion, but there's just a blank _nothing_ where Castiel's familiar expressions used to be. He's a haunted house with the windows bashed in, and Sam doesn't want to think about what awful things might be slithering around in the crumbling walls.

“Cuh--” He takes a shaky breath, clears his throat, and tries again. “Cas, you _gotta_ be in there still, you gotta be able to hear me--”

“Oh, he can hear you,” the Castiel-shaped thing says. “He just can't be bothered to give the slightest of shits, that's all.”

“What the fuck did you sons of bitches do to him?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit! You're wearing him to the motherfucking _prom!”_

Cas aims another kick at Metatron's midsection and then steps over him to advance on Sam. “ _We_ did not ask for this. _We_ did not want this. _We_ didn't do anything to Castiel, he did this to _us._ ” He held his arms out, as if imitating a crucifixion. “And, by extension, did this to himself. He was arrogant, he thought himself strong enough to contain the divine essence of the Seraph, and he was wrong.” The corners of his mouth twitch upwards into something like a smile, but it's really more akin to a baring of the teeth, a subtle but effectively unnerving promise of something vicious and painful. “Are you really surprised? Did he not swallow the entire contents of Purgatory with similar results?”

“We'd...uh, sort of hoped he learned his lesson after that,” Sam admits.

“And that's where you fucked up,” Cas tells him with a forced, harsh laugh. “He doesn't learn lessons. He doesn't _think._ He just _acts_ , and those actions leave messes God himself can't wipe clean. When Lucifer was cast down from Heaven, Castiel assumed the role of the rebellious child, and our Father allowed it—encouraged it, even. He became the new favorite. God said he had _heart_ , but for all his omnipotence, he couldn't recognize that Castiel was just a petulant brat that wanted to disobey for the sake of disobedience.”

“I don't really give a damn about the backstory,” Sam says. “I just wanna talk to my friend.”

“Tough.” He turns to walk back to Metatron, apparently more interested in watching him die than bothering with Sam any longer. “He doesn't want to talk to _you,”_ he says, raising his foot up again to stomp down on the former angel's ribcage.

“STOP!” Sam yells. “Leave him alone, just—just _stop it!”_

“We invite you to try and stop us yourself,” he says flatly, then brings his foot down a second time. Tiny drops of blood splatter up onto his clothes. Metatron finally lays still, his mouth open in a silent howl and his eyes rolled back to show the whites.

Sam swallows hard. He's rooted to the spot, even as the oppressive weight of Grace finally lifts itself away. He's a Hunter, and Hunters aren't supposed fucking _freeze_ in the face of fear, they laugh in it, but _jesusfuck_ , he's gonna relive this shit in his nightmares for a long mothercunting time and he can't _move,_ can't remember how to make his legs work.

“Cas...oh, man... Cas, you're so far in over your fuckin' head right now.”

Cas stoops over a little, even as he turns to look at Sam. There's a flicker of _him_ in those eyes now, a familiar _something,_ but it's not as much of a relief as he'd hoped. That little part of old Cas--the Winchesters' Cas—looks scared absolutely _shitless_.

 

 


	6. In the Back Seat

“A watched pot ain't gonna boil no faster, boy.”

Dean looks up from his phone, but he can't quite meet Bobby's eyes. “I got a bad feeling.”

“You _always_ got a bad feelin'.”

“Yeah, and I'm usually right.”

Bobby pauses, thinks about it for a second, and then shrugs. “Fair enough. You _could_ be right, sure, but maybe Sam just needs a little breathin' room. You ain't exactly been the most pleasant person to be around lately.”

And, yeah, he _knows_ he's been a bastard, but Bobby keeps looking at him like he's just _waiting_ for the moment when he has to wrestle the barrel of a shotgun out of his mouth and it's not fucking helping. All it does is agitate Dean further, and he's never exactly been known for having an even temperament in the first place. It's horseshit of the highest goddamn caliber and he's far too proud for it. He doesn't _want_ concern or comfort, he wants _Cas_. He wants him _here_ , right _here_ and right _now,_ if only to get a shot at kicking the living shit out of him. Truth be told, he's half tempted to dig for a resurrection spell just to personally kill the jackass all over again.

_Stop it,_ Dean tells himself. _Don't fuckin go there._

“I don't know why I'm still surprised. We've been through this song and dance with Cas before, and you'd think I'd be used to it by now, but..” Dean frowns, glances up at Bobby, and quickly averts his eyes again. “But I'm just.. _not_. Doesn't matter how many times Cas walks out, it never gets any easier And it's...” He shifts his weight uncomfortably, searching for the right words, but they won't come. “It's not okay.”

“It's okay to _not_ be okay, Dean.”

“No it ain't.” He shakes his head and offers up a half-assed attempt at a smile, but quickly abandons the effort. “I'm supposed to be a hero.”

“You _are_ a hero,” Bobby says.

He huffs out something like a laugh and lights up a cigarette. “Yeah, okay.”

“Dean, look at me.”

But he can't bring himself to do it, so he keeps his gaze fixed on the ground instead. “Let's not do the Good Will Hunting thing again, okay? I'm not twelve anymore, and once was enough.”

“ _Look_ at me,” Bobby repeats.

It takes a full thirty seconds or so, but Dean finally gathers the nerve to meet his eyes. The old man lays a hand on his shoulder and _fuck_ , they _are_ gonna do the Good Will goddamned Hunting thing again, and suddenly Dean is no longer a hardened soldier, he's the freckle-faced little kid that cringed away from Bobby's hands at first because he thought they would leave bruises the way Dad's always did. Bruises were all he knew back then, and that hasn't changed much, aside from the fact that somewhere along the way he learned to give as good as he got.

“You've spent your whole life rollin' a big ass ball of shit up a steep ass hill. You're allowed to slip now an' then. You're _human_. It _happens._ ”

“'m sorry,” Dean mumbles as he drops his eyes back down to the asphalt. “For earlier. I didn't mean what I said--”

“I don't give a rat's ass about that, you idjit. I'm more worried about what's rattlin' around in your noggin right now. I know the way the gears up there work.” He smiles and gently raps his knuckles against Dean's forehead for emphasis.

Dean takes a drag from his smoke and gives a ghost of a smile. “You shoulda been a guidance counselor.”

“You think so? I'm not sure how many kids would benefit from my 'pour liquor on the problem until it looks less bad' philosophy.”

“Hey, it worked for _me.”_

“You got to be a kid for—at _most—_ about ten whole seconds of your entire life. You don't count, idjit.”

“...Touche'.”

Bobby laughs a little and claps a hand on his shoulder. “Look, all I'm sayin' is, me an' Sam ain't goin anywhere. Might as well stow your suffer-in-solitude bullshit and let us do what we can to put your marbles back in their usual order.”

Dean doesn't really believe there's much that _can_ be done, but he knows better than to say it out loud. He knows Bobby Singer's trademark _hell-or-high-water_ speech by heart already—he's heard it all his life—but he's not keen on hearing it today. It'd be awkward no matter how the old man went about it, because it always _is_ and Dean doesn't have _nearly_ enough patience for this shit today. “Speaking of Sam, where are we supposed to meet him?”

“I guess he'll just...show up back at my place when he's done doin' whatever.” Bobby says with a shrug.

“...' _Doin' whatever'...?_ Bobby, what _is_ my brother doing, exactly? Because a blast like that would've left fallout. There's no way he'd even be able to get close, so--”

“He'll figure somethin' out. ”

“ _You gotta be fuckin shittin me,_ ” Dean growls. “Seriously, man? _Seriously??”_

“Yes, _seriously._ ”

“See, this is why you an' him shoulda woke me up, because I _know_ this shit and it coulda saved all of us a lot of time and fuckery--”

“Stop it,” Bobby says, holding a hand up. “Sam's gonna be _fine._ He'll call if something drastic happens. In the meantime, quit wringin' your hands and get to bein' useful. This car ain't gonna restore itself.”

“'m gonna fuckin punch him,” Dean grumbles.

“No you ain't, jackass, now get over here an' help me.”

 

*

 

Sam's holding the angel blade up in a silent warning, but it feels all wrong because it's _Cas_ standing there _—_ covered in blood, sure, and quite clearly out of his mothercunting mind—but still _Cas_ , still his _friend,_ and he doesn't want to hurt him. “Easy, man, easy...let's just--”

“I didn't do this,” Castiel says. His voice is flat and hollow. He's got his eyes locked on the mess he made of Metatron, but he's looking _through_ _it_ , not _at it,_ and it's fucking _creepy._ “I didn't _want_ this to happen.”

“I believe you,” Sam tells him. “I believe you, I do, so let's both put our blades on the ground and talk about it, yeah?”

Cas looks over, wild-eyed and shivering.

Sam slowly bends to lay his weapon on the ground and holds both hands up as he straightens. “I don't wanna fight you, I just wanna talk. It's alright, buddy, it's alright. I can help you, but I need you to drop the blade first, okay? Cas?”

Castiel looks down at himself, at the fresh blood on his trembling hands and the weapon he's still white-knuckling. It seems to take a lot of effort for him to let go of the damned thing, but he's finally able to manage, and that's a relief because Sam knows he'd get his ass whooped if they actually came to blows.

“Where..where's Dean?” Cas asks.

“With Bobby. He's safe, just real worried about you right now.” Sam keeps his voice soft and steady, but it takes some hefty effort, because this is the exact moment he realizes that Cas is bleeding from both his ears and _oh shit oh shit oh holy shit_ watching Metatron die didn't scare him _half_ as much as this fuckery. “Christ, Cas, what happened to you?”

“I don't remember,” he says, his face scrunched up with the effort of trying to recall _something, anything._ “I don't even know how I _got here_ , or what I was doing before that. It's just...ohfuck _OW--”_

“ _Whoa!”_ Sam gets to his side and gets hold of him just before he goes down. “You're okay, man, I gotcha. Hang--hang on a second...” He eases Cas to the ground. The angel doubles over almost immediately with his palms pressed to his ears and his eyes rolled back. He's shuddering so violently that Sam thinks he might be in the throes of some sort of seizure—he's seen him have similar fits before, but never this _bad—_ and the only thing he can really think of to do is to pull his jacket off and bunch it up under Cas's head and just wait for him to come out of it. _In the meantime..._

He takes a breath to steady himself and dials Dean's number. The phone rings only once, and then he's got an earful of Winchester fury: “ _What the actual_ _ **fuck**_ _, Sammy?”_

“Shut up for a second,” Sam tells him, “I've got Cas. He's alive, but he's..he's sick or something, I don't know.”

“ _What? Sick how?”_

“Put Bobby on.”

“ _Sick **how** , Sam? How bad is it? On a scale of one to ten.”_

Sam looks over at Castiel, still writhing in what had to be unimaginable agony, then over to the wreckage of Metatron's vessel. _Oh, prolly about eighty-fucking-five,_ he thinks, but he can hear the panic in his brother's voice already so he doesn't say it. “It's... pretty bad, man.”

Dean starts to say something else, but then Bobby takes the phone from him. “ _What's happening?”_

“It's Cas,” Sam says, “He's possessed or something. I think he's seizing, but I don't—oh, Christ—he's bleeding from _everywhere,_ and I don't know what to do.”

“ _It's alright, boy, jus' breathe. How bad's the wounds?”_

“He doesn't even _have_ any, he's just...sort of _leaking._ It was just his ears at first, but now his nose is bleeding too, and...” he sucks in a shaky breath. “ _Jesusfuck,_ even his friggin _eyes_ \--”

“ _Okay, Sam, listen to me. I want you to wait out whatever fit he's havin', get him in the car as soon as you think you can move him, an' haul ass back here. You got that?”_

“That's not a good idea. Trust me, you _don't_ want Dean seein' him like this.”

“ _You let **me** handle Dean, okay?”_

“Bobby, he's _dangerous.”_ Sam's voice wavers despite his best efforts. “He's full out fucking _batshit,_ man, I just watched him curbstomp Metatron like it was fuckin' _nothing_ \--”

“ _You got cuffs in your bag? The ones with the angel-proofing mojo?”_

He leaves Castiel's side to root around in his backpack. “Uh..yeah.”

“ _Okay, so slap those on 'im. Chain him to the car if you need to—and you probably will. How bad's Metadouche hurt?”_

“He's dead.”

“ _Throw him in the trunk, we'll burn the body together.”_

“Actually, I'm just gonna soak him in kerosene and light a match and call it good.” Dickwads like Metatron don't get the traditional Hunter sendoff, no matter how awful their death might've been. There's even a part of Sam—a very cruel, vicious part—that thinks the little prick finally got what was coming to him since that time he killed Dean. So, yeah, fuck it.

“ _That'll work. How's Cas doin'?”_

“He's coming out of it, I think. Or...starting to, at least.”

“ _Good, that's good. Get movin' as soon as you can and call me if you run into any problems.”_

“Yeah, alright.”

He sets his phone down and goes back to Castiel. He's finally still, but there's something about the way his eyes keep flitting around that Sam doesn't like. “Hey, Cas? Can you hear me?”

No answer.

“...Cas?”

Nothing.

_Shit._

 

_*_

 

Cas stays out of it for the better part of an hour, long enough for Sam to get him chained up in the back of the car and deal with Metatron's body without much trouble. They're already on the road by the time he regains some semblance of awareness, and that's a relief, because Sam knows he would've had a fight on his hands otherwise.

“Where...where am I?”

“With me,” Sam says. It's vague on purpose—he wants to keep the angel calm, and the easiest way to do that is to _not_ tell him where they're going. _Hopefully._

Cas tries to rub his face, but his hands are cuffed to the door and he can't get them up that far. He frowns, tugs at the cuffs, and then looks up to see Sam's guilty eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Sorry 'bout that,” the Hunter says, “but after what happened, I gotta take some precautions.”

Cas makes a grumpy noise, tugs at the cuffs again, and then freezes. “...Whose blood is this?”

_Oh, this definitely bodes well._ “What's the last thing you remember?”

“Uh...v-voices, lots of voices.”

“You mean like angel radio?” he asks.

“Not...quite.”

There's something shifty about the way Cas says it. Sam can tell he knows more than he wants to let on, and he kind of gets _why_ , but it's distressing all the same because they're _friends_ and he's starting to realize that he can't trust the angel as far as he could fuckin throw him. “What were they saying?”

“I don't know. There were too many of them, and they were talking all at once. It felt like my skull was imploding.”

_Yeah, I'm sure absorbing half you own kind'll do that,_ he thinks.

“...Whose blood is this?” Castiel asks again.

Sam looks at him from the rearview mirror, trying to judge whether or not he's putting on an act, but he can't tell one way or the other. He sighs. “Mostly Metatron's, but some of it's yours. You killed him, and then--”

“Oh, _shit.”_

It pulls a laugh out of Sam despite the situation. “Yeah, I know that feel, buddy.”

“I thought...I thought I was...hallucinating, or something.”

The laughter dies in his throat. “You been doin' that a lot lately? Hallucinating, I mean?”

Cas ignores the question and starts tugging at the cuffs again. “You need to let me go, Sam. You need to let me go _right now.”_

“That's not gonna happen.”

“Dammit, I'm _serious--”_

“Yeah? Well, so am I. You're a liability, Cas. I can't just let you wreak havoc all over the creation.”

“You need to let me go,” he says again, and there's an undercurrent of venom in his voice, a seething rage that makes him sound like someone else entirely. “For your own sake.”

“You don't scare me,” Sam says, and it's _mostly_ true. He's not afraid _of_ Castiel, no, but he's terrified _for_ him, because his nose is bleeding again and the blood vessels in his eyes are all busted, so the whites have turned crimson. His body's coming apart at the seams, and it doesn't look like he's got much time left before he completely dissolves into a puddle of gore. “I'm just trying to _help you_ , man, 'cause you got yourself in some pretty deep shit here, and--”

“You _can't!”_ Cas snaps.

Sam takes a slow, deep breath in through his nose to steady himself and decides to try a different tactic—if only to keep the angel from going completely bugshit. “Dean thought you were dead, you know. It really wrecked him.” He glances into the mirror and sees his face soften, and then it goes completely blank.

“I _was_ dead.”

“Wait, what?”

“It's a long story.”

_Oh, fuck this,_ Sam thinks as he pulls over to the side of the road and turns around in his seat to face him. “Castiel, what the hell's going on? We know you've been stealing Grace, we just don't know why. What's happening? What do you need all that juice for?”

“None of your motherfucking business.”

He barks out a laugh, harsh and humorless. “Yeah? Well, I'm _making_ it my motherfucking business.”

“We strongly advise against that.”

“Who's 'we'?” Sam asks.

There's something wrong with the way the angel grins at him. It's like his smile can't fully fit on his face, but it still doesn't come close to reaching his eyes—his _bloody_ eyes. He's got this _emptiness_ to him, a cold kind of nothing that radiates off him in waves and makes Sam's skin crawl.

_How much of Cas is actually still in there?_   He wonders. Probably not a whole lot, if the way he curb stomped Metatron is anything to go by.

“Aren't you supposed to be the smart one?”

He doesn't really know how to respond to that, so he turns to face forward and guides the car back onto the road as Castiel lets out a laugh that makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

 


	7. Knee-Deep in the Shit Creek

_Okay, so...Cas is alive._ Dean thinks, _That's good. Really good. He's sick, but that's better than dead, at least._

Or so he _hopes_ , anyway. He knows Sam's shit-hit-the-fan voice when he hears it.

He sighs and runs a hand over his face, then looks over at Bobby. The old man's been googling up a storm ever since he got off the phone, trying to find some piece of lore or another, but he won't tell Dean jackshit about what's going on and it's driving him absolutely _mental._

“Should I be worried?” He asks.

Bobby glances up from the computer screen. “If I say no, will it actually make a difference?”

“...I doubt it,” he admits.

“Yeah, I figured.” The old man says, but he doesn't say it unkindly.

“What's wrong with him? You _gotta_ tell me, man, I gotta know. _Please.”_

Bobby hesitates as he considers it. “I think his vessel's melting down. Spontaneous bleeding, that kinda thing, but I don't think that's the biggest problem. Way Sam tells it, he's stone cold nutzoid—we're talkin' _Unabomber manifesto_ kinda crazy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Sam says he killed Metatron, for starters.”

“I don't really see how that's a bad thing.”

Bobby leans back in his chair with a brow raised. “Put your personal vendetta against Metatron aside for a second. Does it really sound like somethin' _our_ Cas would do?”

He thinks about it for a long moment, and then his shoulders slump. “Actually, no.”

“Exactly. My best guess is, all that extra Grace got his cheese slidin' off his cracker.”

“It's the souls-from-Purgatory bullshit all over again,” Dean says miserably. He puts his face in his hands and takes a shaky breath, blinking back a rush of bitter tears. _Fucker never learns his goddamn lesson. Jesus Christ._ It takes a little time for him to get a hold on his emotions, but when he raises up to look back at Bobby, his eyes are red-rimmed, but they're dry. He'll cry later—but for now, there's a job to do. “Okay, so how do we diffuse him?”

“Easiest way would probably be to take out _all_ his Grace, but I'm not sure if we'll be able to separate _him_ from the rest, and if we can't...” He gestures vaguely, and then grimaces.

“If we can't, he'll have to be human, right? Forever.”

“More'n likely.”

But _fuck_ , man, Dean hates the thought of it. He doesn't want to have to do that to him, to take away his wings permanently. Cas loves humans, sure, but he hated actually _being_ one, and Dean hated watching him struggle to adapt to it.

Even so, if that's what it takes to keep him from exploding or running around playing a psychotic caricature of God— _again_ \--then Dean's damn well gonna do it. Even if it breaks his heart, and even if it's a betrayal that he knows Cas would never forgive him for. If it has to happen, it has to happen. _Do what you gotta do_ is the Hunter equivalent of the Lord's Prayer, after all.

Everything inside of him desperately hopes it won't come to that.

“Any ideas on how we _could_ separate them all?” He asks.

“So far, I got nothin'.” Bobby turns his attention back to the computer with a heavy sigh, and Dean decides to leave him to it in favor of crawling into a bottle. It certainly seems like the most reasonable way to cope, silent look of disapproval from the old man be _damned,_ because just _how_ exactly is he supposed to handle a bleeding, batshit crazy Castiel if he _isn't_ three sheets to the mothercunting wind?

“Better pace yourself,” is all Bobby says.

He grunts his acknowledgment while simultaneously tipping back the bottle of whiskey. Yeah, okay, he's gonna need to retain _some_ semblance of control over himself, sure, but he _also_ needs the way his hands keep shaking to stop. He's gotta try to stay as calm as he can manage when Sam and Cas get here, and that'll be a lot easier to do if he's got a baseline buzz worked up. _Such is the plight of the functional alcoholic_ , he thinks. It fills him with a dull kind of horror, a sort of _jesus christ I'm knee-deep in the shit creek_ feeling, but thankfully that starts to fade after a few more drinks. It usually does.

_Cas is gonna be alright,_ he tells himself. _We'll figure out how to fix him. We'll get him through somehow, because we've managed every other time before this. It's gonna be fine._

He doesn't believe it, not completely. Nevertheless, it becomes his mantra, it becomes the thing he clings to in order to keep a lid on his anxiety. He clutches at the 'it'll be okay' train of thought in the same fervent way he holds the whiskey in his hand—it's all a desperate attempt to keep himself together, but it _works_. More or less. Right now, he'll take whatever solace he can, from _wherever_ he can.

After a while, when he's numbed up enough to actually _focus_ at the task at hand and do some brainstorming, he asks: “How're we gonna hold him 'til we figure out the gameplan?”

“Sam's got 'im cuffed up,” Bobby answers.

“That ain't gonna be enough. It won't hold him for long,” he says in a grim voice. “Cas is smart. Calculating. He'll figure out how to weasel his way free, prob'ly sooner than later.”

The old man considers it for a moment, then nods his agreement. “Holy fire seems like the best bet.”

Dean isn't too crazy about that idea, though. Cas would be trapped, sure, but he'd also be separated from the Winchesters physically. Considering the fact that he's also dealing with some kind of illness or another that apparently involves random bleeding— _oh god, his vessel's going to go nuclear_ , he thinks, and then silences the panic with another shot of Jack—he doesn't like the prospect of putting Cas in a box that they won't be able to get into if he needs help. Not like they actually _could_ help him, but that isn't the fuckin point. It's the _principle_ of the thing. “What about sigils?” He asks. “Is there anything along those lines that can power him down, even temporarily? Containment spells? _Somethin_? I don't wanna go the holy fire route unless we absolutely gotta.”

“Lemme do some diggin',” Bobby tells him. “I wouldn't get my hopes up, though.”

But Dean can't _help_ it. If he didn't have at least a _tiny_ speck of hope, even when he _knows_ everything's gonna go to hell in a handbasket, he'd never be able to get out of bed in the morning. He's been steadily descending into nervous breakdown territory for months already as it is, but it's different now that he knows Cas is alive and on his way (against his will, yeah, but that's not the point). He can't afford to crack up right now, because his best friend's on the fucking line and the stakes are just too high. If he's gotta bullshit himself for a while in order to stay upright, so be it. Even if it ends up biting him in the ass, it's what Cas _needs_ from him.

Even if it just makes the end result more devastating.

_Quit it,_ he thinks. _Don't go down that road. It ain't over yet, not even close. Cross that bridge when you get to it._

_That is...If it ain't already burned to the ground by then._

He shakes his head in a half-hearted attempt to erase that particular line of thinking, followed by a few more sips of whiskey just for good measure. Doesn't _quite_ get the job done, but it does enough. Almost.

 

*

 

Castiel laughs for twenty minutes straight.

It's the creepiest thing Sam's ever witnessed, which is saying a _lot_ , given the fact that his whole life has been a never-ending horror movie, but _this_ is...just entirely too fucking much. Ten minutes in, it suddenly occurs to him that he'd happily get on his knees and suck Lucifer's dick if that would make this shit _stop_ , and then he's overcome with a wave of nausea so strong that he has to pull over for a second time.

“You plan on shutting the fuck up anytime soon?” He asks, but his voice is weak and uneven.

Cas just laughs again. It's a manic sound, a _demented_ sound, and for all Sam's talk about how Castiel doesn't scare him, this _does,_ because whatever's in the back seat right now, _it's not Cas_. He doesn't know _what_ the fuck it is, but it sure as shit isn't him.

“It's just so _funny!”_ The angel cackles.

He knows it's a bad idea, but he can't stop himself. He turns around and asks, “What is?”

“You really think _we're_ the problem, here?”

“Actually, yeah,” Sam tells him. “Yeah, I do.”

“Oh, okay.” The sarcasm in his voice is palpable. “Enjoy armageddon, then.”

Sam's stomach is making a valiant effort to crawl up into his throat. He swallows hard, forces back the nausea. “The fuck are you talking about?”

“All will be revealed, provided that you release us.” That sick grin reappears. “Otherwise, our hands are tied. Quite literally.” He jangles the chain on his cuffs for emphasis.

“You're fulla shit,” Sam says, inwardly cringing at the uncertainty in his own voice. The moment all this drama came to light, he'd immediately suspected that there might be something going down, something that had somehow managed to stay off _their_ radar but certainly not Castiel's. He _knows_ Cas, he knows he wouldn't have done all this unless he thought there was some kind of merit in what he was doing and believed the risk was worth it. Like Bobby said, he's not a power tripper, and Sam still believes that, too.

_And yet..._

At the same time, the version of Cas he's talking to _now_ can't be trusted in any capacity. He might have some vital information, sure, but Sam isn't dumb enough to think he'll spill the beans if the cuffs come off. All he wants is the chance to make a run for it.

Sam's got no intention of giving him one, apocalypse be damned.

“Would you like to know the _funniest_ part?”

“Uh, not...not really, no.” Sam says. “But I have a feeling you're gonna tell me anyway.”

Cas leans forward with a wicked smile. “You're rendering everything Castiel has done—everything he's _fought for—_ entirely useless. His struggle, _our suffering_ , all of it. And we can assure you that he's somewhat less than appreciative of that fact. Some _savior_ you are.”

It strikes a nerve, but he locks his jaw, takes a breath. He's not going to take the fucking bait. “Well, he can take that up with me once his marbles are back in the right order.”

The smile gets wider. “You'll be long dead before that happens.”

Now it's Sam's turn to laugh, and he can tell it's not the reaction Cas 3.0 was expecting based on the way his grin falters. _Good_. Cas is his brother, but the monster masquerading as him can go fuck itself. “Yeah, you might be right about that. But see, here's the thing...” He looks him right in the eye, his mouth twitching up to form a smirk of his own. “I'm a _Winchester_ , and we've got this pretty unique talent for crawling out of our graves and making sure that shittalking pricks get what's coming to them when we _do,_ so.”

It throws the angel off his game, albeit only briefly. It's just _barely_ perceptible, but Sam catches the split-second of a distinctly unsettled look, and he's gonna go ahead and add it to the 'small victories' pile because _fuck_ this douchebag.

“You're operating under the assumption that you'll _have_ a grave. We imagine it'll be somewhat hard to dig yourself from the earth if said earth no longer exists.”

Okay, yeah, that's a pretty valid point, even if Sam refuses to acknowledge it outright. “Well, if it _doesn't_ exist, that'd be on you. I mean, saving the world was the whole _point_ of this...” He trails off and gestures at the angel. “This... _bullshit,_ wasn't it? So you better hope and fucking _pray_ there's something for me to come back to, because otherwise it means you failed.”

“We think it's more likely that keeping us in chains would be the thing to directly bring about the endtimes, as opposed to a failure on our part. _That_ would be on _you.”_

“There's a problem with that logic, though.” Sam tells him with a carefully-constructed look of boredom. “You could _still_ stop it, even if you're chained up. All you'd have to do is explain what's going on so me and Dean could handle it. The world won't end just because we've got you on a short leash, but it _will_ end if you decide to keep being an unmitigated asshole. If you wanna play chicken when the fate of the planet's hanging in the balance, go to it. I'm not gonna try and beat the answers outta you. But don't you _dare_ delude yourself—it's on _your_ head, _not_ mine.”

“We care very little about the amount of bullshitting you must do in order to sleep at night,” Cas says. “That's _your_ business. We're sure Dean did a _masterful_ job in teaching you that particular craft. He's always had quite the knack for it.”

He's got this smug little look on his face, and Sam's extremely compelled to bitchslap it the hell _off_ , but he manages to hold himself back by digging his fingers into the sides of his seat.“Oh, _fuck you.”_

Castiel lets out one of those crazed, tittering laughs. “ _Speaking_ of Dean--”

“No.” Sam holds up a hand to cut him off. “ _Hell no._ You keep your fucking mouth shut about my brother.”

“To paraphrase your earlier statement: _you don't scare us.”_

Cas just wants to get a rise out of him, he _knows_ it, but it gets his blood boiling regardless. His hands clench into white-knuckled fists on their own volition. “I'd watch it, man. You're just _begging_ for a fucking beat-down.”

“The fact you think you could actually _administer_ one is truly adorable,” the angel snickers. “You wouldn't dare cause harm to Castiel's vessel, especially not while bound and defenseless. Your own moral code won't allow it.”

In any other situation, that'd probably be true, but he's giving some serious thought to drop-kicking that moral code right out of the mothercunting window. There's a thick rage bubbling just under his skin, a searing poison, an itch for retribution. Family or not, _brother_ or not, _defenseless_ or not, Cas has had an asswhooping coming since the day he walked out, and Sam would love nothing more than to be the one that gives it to him.

But then he remembers Dean, remembers the lost look in his eyes and those horrific screams. _Cas is DEAD, Sammy! He's DEAD!_

It still makes him shudder.

If _anyone's_ going to get to kick the dogshit out of Castiel, it should be Dean. Sam won't take that from him, not after seeing him break so deeply. After all his brother went through in the wake of the angel's absence, he deserves that catharsis.

And then he remembers _their_ Cas, remembers the pure _terror_ in his eyes when he realized what he'd done to Metatron and remembers him asking _Whose blood is this?_

And then he remembers that he isn't even talking _to_ Cas, and hasn't been for a while. It's something else—something awful—but it's so hard to think of the vessel being occupied by anyone _other_ than him. He may not even be _present_ for this little pissing match.

Even so, this new dude is a prick—a _snarky_ prick, at that—and Sam is 500% done with being goaded. _That's the problem with Not Cas,_ he thinks as he locks his jaw and faces front. _That's what we gotta watch out for. Not Cas probably has access to his memories. If he knows our entire history, he'd know where to jab. He's just talking circles so he can get me to give him openings._

“ _Wow,”_ the angel sighs in mock relief. “Really had us going there, Sam. We thought you'd actually do it.”

He can practically _feel_ the dead-eyed stare boring into the back of his head, and he goes goosebumps all over.

“No matter. We're sure _Dean_ can't _wait_ to reconnect. He'll probably be much more loving that _you've_ been.”

Sam draws a shaky breath, holds it, and glances up through the windshield at the sky. _So help me God, I will_ crash _this_ motherfucking _car._ He exhales. Tightens his grip on his steering wheel. Tries to find his happy place. Doesn't quite get there.

Now, instead of constant laughing, Not Cas goes into a stream-of-consciousness monologue where he debates the likelihood that Dean might put out. Regardless of the fact that Sam frantically puts his earbuds in to block it, the speech lasts almost the entire drive.

 

*

 

Cas only hears the filth spewing out once he's able to break from of the absence, and he's _appalled._ He gasps and tries to cover his mouth, but the cuffs prevent it. His gaze flits to the front seat, where Sam's death-gripping the wheel, and then back down to the rust-red smears of dried blood on his hands.

_Nonono please God no please--_

_(we are your God now)_

_Please no fuck no I need to get away I need to get out of here please--_

Sam seems to pick up on the shift in the atmosphere, or perhaps the change in Castiel's presence. He looks to the rearview mirror, and then double-takes. “...Cas?” His brow furrows as he tugs one of his earbuds loose. “What--”

“You have to let me go,” he says, wide-eyed and shivering. “Sam, _please,_ you--”

“Sorry, buddy, but we've been over this.” He sighs, but there's something close to sympathy in his voice. “I can't--”

“ _You don't understand!_ ” It comes out frantic, bordering on hysterics. “ _Dean can't see me like this!”_

Sam gives a bitter laugh. “Oh, trust me, I'm not too happy about it either.”

“I'm _begging you_ , don't let him see me. I can't, I can't do it. I can't face him, I _can't!”_

“Them's the breaks, dude. You fucked up on a monumental freakin' scale, so you're just gonna have to put on your bigboy pants and clean up your mess.”

“Sam--!” He snarls in frustration when the restraints around his wrists prevents him from reaching out and yanks at the chain hard enough to leave bruises.

“A for effort, but that isn't going to get you very far. Might as well calm your shit.”

But he _can't_ , not when he has such intimate knowledge of how painful this whole situation has been for Dean. He's heard countless prayers, endless streams of silent _please-come-home_ 's and _I-need-you_ 's—things he couldn't exactly ignore but did nothing about. This whole time, he operated under the assumption that they would never see one another again. He'd comforted himself with believing that he would be dead and gone before any kind of reunion could take place, because the thought of letting the Winchesters see just how far he'd fallen--of how much these changes would _hurt them--_ is a kind of dull agony in its own right.

“It'll _kill him_ , Sam!”

There's a short pause, and then Sam says: “Maybe you should've thought of that before you decided to go off the reservation.”

“You think this was _easy?”_ Castiel asks. “You think I made this decision _lightly?”_

“I think you got cocky.” He answers. “I think you didn't tell us because you knew we'd say it was a bad idea, and you thought you'd be able to handle it on your own. You were _wrong_ , though, and there's consequences to that.”

“Don't talk to _me_ about consequences!” Cas snaps.

Sam sighs again. “You wanna know the worst part? For _me_ , at least, it's the fact that you've pulled moves like this _before_ and didn't learn from it. It's always the same shit in a different toilet with you, _always_. But—hey--whatever it takes, right? You'll swallow all the souls in Purgatory or cannibalize your own fuckin' kind, because you think you can bend the rules. Problem is, you _can't.”_

_(listen to him Cas he may be onto something)_

There's a hard lump in his throat. His eyes are blurry, stinging with a watery heat he doesn't recognize to be tears. “I didn't intend for this.”

“I know, but it happened anyway. You should've known better, Cas.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Yeah, I bet.” The sincerity in his voice physically _hurts._ Underneath it all, under all the resentment and anger and feeling betrayed, Sam is still his friend. He still _cares_. Castiel feels the crushing weight of his inner struggle, feels the raging of that _I-want-to-fucking-kill-you-and-save-you-at-the-same-time_ war, and he wants nothing in the world as desperately as he wants to reach into his own vessel and wrench that weight out of his chest.

“Does he hate me?”

“...What?”

“Dean,” Cas clarifies, but it's hard to get his name out. “Does he hate me?”

He's not completely sure which answer he actually wants to hear.

Sam hesitates, trying to choose his words delicately. Trying to tiptoe around whatever it is that he really wants to say. “He...doesn't hate you, man. Neither do I, for that matter. We're pissed to pieces, yeah, but..” He shrugs and trails off.

“Perhaps you _should_ hate me.”

This time, when the Hunter laughs, it sounds...sad, almost. “Oh, yeah, without a doubt. We've ganked a lot of big bads for a lot less that this. If _either_ of us were smart, we'da taken you down over the Purgatory shit.”

“But you didn't,” Cas says. “Why not?”

“Because we can't.”

“...Kill me?”

“ _Hate_ you,” Sam answers. “We've been through too much. You're family.”

_I'm doing the right thing,_ he wants to tell him. _Even if you don't agree with the way I go about it. I only do these things because I don't want you or Dean to have to. Why can't you_ see _that? Why can't you_ ever _see it? How far do I have to go to make either of you understand that I just want to protect you?_

_(your death might do the trick)_

He drops his head, and his shoulders turn inwards. _It's probably_

_(definitely)_

_the truth._

“We're almost there,” Sam tells him, “so whatever you gotta do to brace yourself, I'd get to it.”

He takes a shaky breath and mutters a quiet, “Alright.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 'cheese slid off his cracker' line is a shameless Green Mile reference. I'm not that clever.  
> Anyway, next chapter we'll have the much-awaited DeanCas reunion, and it's gonna be a doozy.


	8. Beast in Repose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well shit, dudes.  
> Okay, so I posted this chapter once before, and I kind of missed some pretty painful mistakes that I just couldn't leave in (omg I forgot Cas was cuffed at one point fuck ) so I went back and changed some things, tweaked a few other things for clarity and whatnot, and then the spirit overtook me and so now the chapter's longer because I added a scene or two as well  
> Yeah, sorry, I kind of just post things as soon as I finish writing a chunk, and sometimes when I'm reading over it after a certain amount of time (or actual sleep) I find stuff that bugs me in shit I already posted and um  
> Sometimes this happens.  
> It'll probably happen often tbh because the plot in this thing is bullshit ahahahafuck  
> I probably still missed some things, idk

Dean's phone starts ringing. He stumbles, damn near bounces his face off the table in his haste to get to it, but manages to catch himself at the last second. Bobby shoots him a look that screams something along the lines of _smooth move, idjit—_ a look he pointedly ignores as he hits the speaker button.

“Sammy, what's goin' on?” There's a tension in his voice that he can't quite mask, despite his most valiant effort to do so.

Sam clears his throat. _“I just wanted to let you know that we're about ten minutes away...”_ He sounds every bit as stressed as Dean _feels. “And, uh...don't freak out, alright?”_

It's a little late for that, but whatever. “Okay...” He trails off. He can sense that his little brother has more to say, and he wants to give him the chance to say it. Preferably sometime this goddamn _decade--_

“ _Cas is awake...but I gotta give you fair warning, man: he's not really—not really been himself.”_

“We sorta figured that,” Bobby says.

“ _No, you don't understand,”_ Sam tells them, _“there's Our Cas and...and then there's Not Cas, and the other one's...sort of a vicious piece of shit, and that's putting it mildly ._ ” There's a pause, presumably as he takes his cell away to muffle his words, but they can still hear the faint: _“Sorry, Cas.”_

And even fainter: “ _I'm sure it's a fair assessment, given the circumstances.”_

It's weird how hearing Castiel's voice gets Dean's heart to somersault. He tries not to read into that, doesn't wanna think about it much, because it's the first time he's heard him speak in months so _of course_ he's gonna have a reaction of some kind, it _totally_ doesn't mean anything other than relief. _Totally._

“ _I'm just saying,”_ Sam's voice is louder now, so he must've brought the phone back up to his ear. _“It's gonna be rough on you--”_

“What the blue-eyed fuck is _with_ you an' Bobby lately? I went to _Hell,_ dickhead, you think I can't handle _this?”_ Dean sounds defensive, even to himself. He struggles against the urge to facepalm and swallows hard, shifting his weight uncomfortably as Bobby stares at him with a look he can't quite identify but knows for _damn_ sure he doesn't like. “What exactly do you guys think's gonna happen?”

For a few seconds, there's nothing but silence. _Painful_ silence. The kind with a heavy weight to it, the kind that speaks volumes even if Sam _himself_ chooses not to. Everything inside of Dean starts squirming. He can only _imagine_ the kinda shit his little brother's filtering out in his head. Sammy's always had a talent for picking his words delicately—it's part of the reason why they work so well as a team. He's the perfect counterbalance to Dean's bull-in-a-verbal-china-shop nature, but right now it's irritating and stupid because _Cas_ is the one they should be worried about. _Cas_ is the one they need to devote their energy on, rather than wasting time trying to handle _him—_ a grown-ass freakin' man—with goddamn kid gloves. “We got 'im. Stop worryin' about me.”

He doesn't need to _see_ Sammy to tell he's got his bitchface on. It bugs the hell out of him, because he doesn't _understand_ , but it's not important right now. _Cas is coming home._

Somehow, that home—what Dean _thought of_ as Castiel's home--was the backseat of the Impala, in the same way that _his_ home was behind the wheel. He wonders if Cas felt that, or if he just saw what he _wanted_ to see in this disgraced angel. If he'd just assumed too much, maybe. They never _really_ understood eachother, after all. And _wow_ , look where _trying_ got them: at eachother's throats, trading punches, sometimes legitimately trying to _kill eachother._

_Doesn't matter. He's coming home, and we'll figure the rest out._

_Somehow._

But what if he's just projecting? What if Cas decided that his home was in Heaven, with those pricks, and maybe he _knows_ it, but he doesn't want to admit it or _see_ it? It's possible, in Dean's mind, even if it comes from a place he listens to more than he should.

Another silence, but it only lasts for a few seconds long enough to be awkward, and then Sammy finally says: _“My bad, Dean. I didn't mean--”_

“Shut up,” Dean says. “I don't want to hash this out just now, my ego isn't _that_ fuckin delicate. We're cool. Moving right along..”, He's looking at Bobby as he says it, because he's within glaring range and he means it to them both, anyway, “..how are we getting Cas uncuffed from the door?”

“ _...What?”_

He lets out a long-suffering sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Listen, Sammy, we're gonna have to uncuff him from the car door, right? At least to bring him in. How exactly are we gonna do that? You got any ideas? Or Cas, maybe?”

Pause, but he can faintly hear Sam turning to ask Cas how they may be able to hold him, since he seems more like himself for the moment. Dean paces around the piece of shit room as Bobby watches with that pain-in-the-ass _I know!_ look in his eyes.

He lights a cigarette and waits.

Eventually, Sam puts the phone back up to his face and goes, _“Okay, he knows something that might work. Bobby, you still there?”_

“Yep.”

“ _We're gonna need some ingredients for a spell. Write this stuff down, okay?”_

Bobby takes the phone, switches it off off speaker, and grabs for the yellow legal pad beside his laptop. “Alright, I'm listenin'.”

Dean takes another drag from his cigarette and continues to wait, but a little more impatiently.

“Yep. Alright. Okay.” Bobby balances the phone in the crook of his ear and scribbles down the list. “Yeah, we got that in the Impala....I ain't got _that_ , but I know who does....yeah, that'll be easy...okay...”

Meanwhile, Dean's practically crawling out of his skin with the need to be _doing something_. “What's it for?”

The old man holds up a finger to silence him. He huffs out a cloud of grey smoke and keeps waiting.

“Alright. We'll keep him where he is for the moment, then, until I can get the other stuff together. It won't take long.”

“What if someone around here happens to see the random man hangcuffed to a fuckin car?” Dean asks. “Drenched in blood, at that?”

“It won't take too long, quit bellyachin',” Bobby tells him.

He grinds his teeth together and lets the issue lie for the moment. More important things to worry about. Namely, Cas. If there's one thing Dean Winchester does well, it's worry. He just learned how to internalize that over the years and use that energy to ease the transition into caretaker mode. He knows he's _right_ , he knows he can push through all of this without Sam and Bobby acting like he's about to fucking break. He's scared—when _isn't_ he, though?--but he knows what he's gotta do, knows what his job in all this is gonna be.

He drops his cigarette into an empty beer bottle and takes a breath. _Okay._

 

_*_

 

“You want me to give you a minute?” Sam asks.

“...Yeah. We need to talk,” Dean's got his eyes locked on the angel, but Cas won't look at him. He's got gauze and bandages in one hand, and a bowl of soapy water in the other. He climbs into the back to sit next to him, barely noticing when Sam pulls the keys out of the ignition and heads into the room to see if Bobby needs any help.

“Been a while, man,” he tells him, but Cas still won't look over. He sighs, holding the bowl with his knees while he wets one of the bandages and wrings it out. “I'm just gonna...clean you up and stuff, okay? Cas?”

Nothing.

“Does anything hurt?”

_Still_ nothing.

Dean sighs and scoots closer, mindful of the bowl in his lap. “Gotta tell ya, buddy, I can't tell if you're ignorin me on purpose or if you just went gomer. It's kinda freakin me out, so if you could...y'know, acknowledge that I'm even _here_ , that'd be great.”

Castiel's eyes shift over to him, and then back to the window.

Given the circumstances _,_ it's probably the best he's gonna get.

“Well, if you _can_ hear me, don't move. Okay? 'm just gonna..clean you up and stuff.”

The angel stays stock-still as Dean busies himself with wiping away all the blood on his face. It takes a while, and he's almost afraid to _touch_ him, but having a job to do makes him feel better. Less worthless, at least. “Your vessel's takin some major hits, huh?”

“Does my appearance frighten you?” Cas stares down at his hands as he asks it.

The Hunter pauses to consider the question with his hand hovering over the soapy water, then he gives one of his troublemaker smiles and shakes his head. “How long have you known me? I ain't scareda _shit.”_

“That's a lie.”

He huffs out something that might've been a laugh if he'd tried a little harder, reaching up to dab at the trickle of blood leaking from the corner of Castiel's left eye. “Yeah, you're probably right.”

“What are you doing?”

Dean bites down on his tongue, trying to hold in the rage that wants to explode out, trying to just be glad he's got the crazy sonofabitch _back_ after all this time, but he can't help it. He drops the bloody rags into the bowl and sets it on the floorboard. “Should prob'ly ask you the same thing, shouldn't I?”

“Or, actually, you could just _not--”_

Dean laughs, soft and bitter. “Your Lucifer's showing again.”

“Oh, how _terribly_ inconvenient it must be for me to have shown a hint of a spine.”

“Cas, _spine_ is one thing, but christ, you're fuckin' _scary.”_

“It didn't...happen as I'd planned,” Castiel says. It sounds like a confession, but Dean just scoffs.

“Why in God's name would you do something so _stupid?_ ”

“I've got good reason, Dean--”

“ _Bullshit._ Look at you! There ain't nothin worth that. _Nothin--_ ”

“I _know_ what I'm doing!”

“Don't you fuckin' always.” It's softer, but there's a bite in it, and he looks up at those big blue eyes to see the exact moment that little barb hit home. There's just enough time to think _ah, fuck, I'm a dick,_ but he shakes that off, because part of him really _does_ wanna hurt Cas any way he can right now, he just won't do it physically... Not while the dude looks like he's already kneeling at death's feet.

“I...miscalculated,” Castiel murmurs, locking his gaze on the window once more as he turns his face away.

“That ain't even _close_ to good enough,” Dean tells him. His voice only shakes the slightest bit, but it's enough for his ears to start burning in shame.

“It's what I've got,” he says.

The Hunter sighs and scrubs a hand down his face. “Whatever, we'll come back to that. What happened in the mountains? We got a lead on you there, you left an inprint in the snow. What's up with the wings, Feathers?”

Cas looks up and squints at him in that little way he had when he was unimpressed with Dean Winchester's Stupid Shit. It's endearing and familiar, it's pure _Cas._ He hadn't realized how much he'd missed that look until now, and his conditioned response to it is the same as it ever was. He grins from ear to ear.

The angel huffs. “I don't remember. It was really loud, though. And...and painful.”

“Good a start as any, I guess. Why did I think you were dead? What happened there?”

The angel shrugs and resumes his window-staring. “It likely happened when Crowley killed me.” He tries to pass it off as regular conversation, nonchalant as a comment on the landscape, but Dean's hanging on his every word, and he catches it, and his stomach does an uneasy twist. “How, uh, did you get back?”

“....It's ...complicated,” he says.

“Why'd he do it?”

“Something about pressure valves and factory settings. It worked, for a little while....”

Dean waits for him to continue, but he clamps his mouth shut.

“You ain't givin us much to go on. You know that, right?”

“It's not your problem.”

“You _know_ that's bullshit, man.” He shakes his head and looks down for a minute. “You owe me some answers, at the very least. What have I ever fucking done to _not_ earn your trust, Cas?”

The angel winces, but after a second he sets his jaw and squares his shoulders. “Well, I mean...you tried to _kill me--”_

“And Crowley _did_ kill you, apparently, so what's your point?”

Cas rolls his eyes, like that doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things, and then he's suddenly fascinated with the cuffs because he can't meet Dean's gaze. “You think I trust _him_ , either?”

“I just wanna help you fix it, man. Point blank. That's my only motive, and you've got no idea how deep you're even _in_ it right now, or you'd be _working with me on this!_ ”

The angel goes quiet, his fingers locked together on the door handle. He's turning away, and he still won't fucking _look up,_ and there's a knot in Dean's throat when he finally gets it working enough to say,

“If the world's goin ass-over-applecarts, I need you in the game. _With_ me, not _against_ me.” He stops, takes a breath, puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes until he finally gets Cas looking at him, right into his eyes. They're freaky in their current state, like his entire skull is just filling up with blood, but he sees a little of _his_ Cas in there, and he's pleading his case to it with everything inside of him. “Man, don't do this.”

“You don't understand. I left for a reason. I knew I'd be a—what's the phrase Sam used?-- 'Vicious piece of shit?' I didn't want you to see it.”

“I can take it.” The Hunter flashes one of his charming little troublemaker smiles—the one that led them into a brothel so many years ago, but the angel looks away again, thus remains un-charmed.

Castiel makes a ruffled little sound of irritation and shifts into that 'not now, peasant' face of his. “You'll excuse me for not pulling party streamers out of my coat to congratulate you.”

“Don't be a dickhead, Cas, I'm tryin' to—”

“I don't care _what_ you're doing, frankly. I left for a reason.”

“A pretty _stupid_ reason--”

“You don't even know what that reason _is,_ so could you just shut your mouth for five fucking seconds?”

Dean holds his hands up. “Alright, alright, I'm sorry.” He watches Castiel's struggle to reign himself in play out on his face. He sighs, purses his lips, and tries a little harder to do the same. “You've got the floor.”

Cas leans forward, frowning with such earnest puzzlement that Dean manages a laugh. It's that flicker of the Cas he knows, the one he became endeared to on late night drives and burger runs. The one he can't forget. _No matter who he is now_ , he thinks. His heart clenches in his chest. “It's an expression, buddy. I don't mean for real.”

“Oh,” Cas mumbles. He straightens up and takes a breath he doesn't need.

_He never even breathed until he started hangin around us,_ Dean thinks out of nowhere. He'd never noticed it until now, but it's true—when they first met in the barn, and for the first couple of months at least, Cas never breathed. He didn't pant, didn't cough, didn't scratch his nose or fidget. He was just... _there_ , this strange otherworldly thing, this immobile force. Must've picked all those things up from the Winchesters as nervous little tics.

Dean doesn't know how he's supposed to feel about coming to that realization.

“I knew you would talk me out of it,” Cas eventually says. “My mission. I couldn't afford to let that happen.”

“ _What_ mission?”

“Nothing I want you or Sam to concern yourselves with. That's the _point._ ”

“And yet you show up at Devils Den and ice Metatron right in front of my brother? Like we're supposed to just _allow_ that kinda bullshit right in front of our faces? Do you remember who the _fuck we are?”_

“I didn't know what was happening. If I _had_ , I would've been on the other side of the solar system. I wanted to keep you safe...primarily from _myself.”_

“Yeah? How's that workin' out for you?”

Castiel's gaze returns to the window. “I miscalculated.”

“You keep sayin that like it means jack-shit.”

“I did what had to be done, Dean! You of _all_ people should know what that's like.”

“Why, though?” He asks, “If it just _had_ to be done, _why_ did it have to be done? And why the fuck did _you_ have to be the one to do it?”

“I can't give you those answers,” the angel tells him. There's a sadness in the way he says it, and it settles heavy on Dean's heart.

“No, you could. You just won't.”

He doesn't deny it. He leans against the seat with his head tilted up and his eyes scrunched shut, like he's starting to lose his grip on whatever he's been holding back, but he's still trying to hang on.

Dean doesn't know what to do or how to comfort him, so he puts a hand on his shoulder like it could _possibly_ help. “Cas? Are you hurting?”

“Go inside,” Cas answers.

“Ain't happening. Are you okay?”

Castiel doubles over and tries to bring his hands to his ears, but can't manage it because of the shackles. “ _Dean, go!”_

“I ain't gonna just _leave you_ out here, man.” He gets a fistful of trenchcoat and hauls him upright. “Talk to me! What's wrong?”

Cas's eyes meet his, wide and crazed, then he pulls away. Dean moves back to give him space, his brow furrowed. He gets this uneasiness in his gut, but the cause of it doesn't dawn on him right off the bat; too busy trying to help, even if he doesn't have the slightest clue _how_. All he knows for sure is that wild horses couldn't tear him from Castiel's side, and it's all he wants to concern himself with.

“...What the hell was that?” He asks, when the angel finally straightens up and whatever episode he'd been having seems to have blown over.

Cas just turns toward him and laughs.

 

*

 

When Dean finally comes into the room, he's ghost-white.

“Pretty intense, huh?” Sam doesn't even look up from his ipad.

“How...uh, how sure are we that Lucifer ain't swimmin' around in there?”

“'Bout...fifty-fifty,” Sam says. “That was my first thought, too, but he's in the cage. According to _Crowley_ , anyway.”

“ _Awesome.”_ He flops down on the edge of one of the beds and drops his head into his hands.

“No way Cas coulda pulled that off, though,” Bobby says. He gets up from the little table and tosses Dean a beer from the fridge.

“Not _regular_ Cas, maybe,” Sam sets his ipad aside and shrugs, “but if he'd already gotten a couple angels under his belt...maybe quite a bit more than that...”

“I don't even wanna _think_ about it,” Dean mutters.

“I hear you, man.”

“Then don't,” Bobby tells the boys in his grouchy, matter of fact way. “There's other shit we gotta do, like get all this crap together, for instance.” He gestures to the list of spell ingredients. “Someone's gonna have to run an errand, and Dean's already three sheets to the wind, so--”

Dean glares his disapproval at being put in timeout, but stays quiet, if only because he's the dumbass that decided to drink in the _first_ place.

“--you're up, Sam. I'll stick around and keep an eye on things.”

The stupid moose nods his stupid moose head and holds his stupid moose hand out at Dean.

“...Wha?”

“ _Keys_ , space cadet. I'm taking your car.”

“Yeah, no, that's not happenin.”

Sammy rolls his eyes. “How could I _possibly_ fuck that car up any worse than you already have? 'Sides, I'm not just gonna go meet up with Garth while I've got a psychotic angel in the back seat. Are you stupid?”

“...Valid point,” he grumbles, fishing in his jacket pocket.

“I'll be quick,” he promises.

 

*

 

Dean's been checking on Cas every so often, but he seems to be unconscious—or _gone—_ because there was a brief moment when the angel first stopped breathing a few hours ago where Dean didn't immediately remember that he didn't need to oxygen to live and his eyes started welling up and there was a lot of face-touching, a lot of _wait-no-don't-die_ and _please-Cas-I-need-you_ and it's fucking _embarassing_ , even if hypno!Cas was the only one to bear witness to it.

And now he feels fucking stupid, closing the door behind him after another trip to the car and back, but he makes a grab for the cigarettes on the counter and asks,“Hey, can't we just..y'know, uncuff him now? While he's hibernating?”

Bobby thinks about it. “Better not, kid. I wouldn't put it past him to be just waitin' for a chance.”

“Dude, you know what he said? 'I don't trust Crowley _either'_. Implying the other part to that _either_ equation is _me—_ seriously? After everything, after all the rivers of shit and hellfire we hauled eachother through? I'm ranked right there with _that motherfucking--”_

“I _thought_ I heard that filthy mouth of yours.”

Dean's used to random people suddenly appearing at his side, so Crowley's voice doesn't take him by surprise in the slightest. He turns and gives the King of Hell a cruel smile. “You've got perfect timing, man. I was just about to talk about how much fun I'm gonna have beating the fuck outta you.”

“Take a breath, Squirrel. I'm here to help the little halo-holder.” The King gestures towards the parking lot. He's got this smug little smirk, like he thinks he's got something to hold over their heads, but something tells Dean it's just bullshit, all for show. Something tells him Crowley's starting to get _nervous_. “Step outside? It's too crowded in here.”

Bobby moves to follow, but Dean motions for him to sit back down and shuts the door after the demon saunters through. He folds his arms (he's palming a blade and he makes good and goddamn _sure_ the smarmy fuck knows it's _there_ ) and paces a short path on the sidewalk before he finally turns and addresses the King head on. “You have thirty seconds to start talking before I gank your ass where you stand. Don't test me tonight, because I'd _love_ something to hit just now, and your face is fucking _begging_ for it. We ain't got time for your dramatics.”

That pompous sneer of Crowley's melts right the fuck off in a hurry. “Alright, okay, fine. I didn't kill Cas to _hurt_ him.”

“Factory settings, right?”

“Exactly. His vessel was going to explode—which I actually prevented, if you'll notice. And he _came back_ , so I'm not sure what you're upset about. You wanted him back _sooo_ badly, and you _get_ him back, _and this is how you bloody treat me?”_

“Why'd I feel it when he died?”

Crowley looks genuinely baffled. “...What, now?”

“When he died, I, uh..felt it?” _I'm talking to the King of Hell about my feelings. Oh god I gotta quit drinkin._

“I...wouldn't know.” The demon says.

“Pretend I didn't ask that,” Dean grumbles. “How'd you know what he was doin' before we did? And don't gimme your “I'm the King” speech.”

“Eh, you know how it goes,” Crowley tells him with a shrug. “Friend of a friend, that sort of thing. I've got eyes and ears everywhere.”

“Why didn't you tell us sooner?”

“We made a deal.”

“You're talkin about Cas?”

“No, a girlscout. You wouldn't imagine the carnage involved when pre-teen girls want to move a lot of cookies.”

“Good one.” Dean says with a dead-straight face, and then he starts drawing back for a punch.

“You're no fun anymore,” Crowley grouses. “Okay, Cas and I might've had an arrangement.”

His fist pauses. “So you were working together, in other words.”

“I didn't bloody say that. I said we had a deal.” The King sighs. He's got this stupid condescending air about him that makes Dean want to beat his face in, but he waits for him to continue. And he does: “To sort of...stay out of eachother's way.”

_Because you're chickenshit_ , the Hunter almost says. _You didn't want him coming after you._ But he lets his body language soften up, and he nods for Crowley to keep going, because when putting pressure on the demon for shit, the quickest way to weasel information out of him was to pretend they're actually friends.

“He's getting out of hand.”

Dean quirks a smile. “Oh, yeah, I heard the 'showing spine' monologue. Don't get him started.”

Crowley pinches the bridge of his nose. “He's dangerous.”

“Well, he's...supposed to save us all, so there's that.” He brushes past the demon, checks on Cas through the back window, and then turns and motions for the King to follow him inside the little motel room. “We've been standin out here too long. C'mon.” But the fucker hesitates, and Dean grabs him by the back of the neck and shoves him toward the door. “You think I've _really_ been givin much of a fuck about devil's traps just now? Move your ass.”

He gets the point after that, and ducks into the cramped space serving as command central for the Hunters. “Been a while, hasn't it?” Crowley purrs at Bobby.

Dean closes the door and leans against it with his arms folded. “Don't start runnin your mouth, man, I got some blanks you still gotta fill in... _and_ I haven't decided if I'm gonna kick the shit outta you yet, either, so go ahead and keep that in mind.”

Crowley scowls and puts his hands in his pockets. “What do you want to know?”

“What's he bulking up for?” Dean asks again. “He keeps talking about the endtimes, and trying to stop it, and he just ' _had to'._ What's that about?”

“Exactly what it _sounds_ like it's about. The end of bloody _days_.”

“You believe him?”

“ _Yes_ , Dean, I _do._ ”

“Based on what, exactly?” Bobby pitches in, “What's your evidence?”

The demon hesitates again.

“Do _not_ bitch up on me right now,” Dean growls at him.

“Cain's brother.”

“..Abel? But he's d--”

“Dead—yes, you moron--exactly why it's less than ideal to have him traversing the mortal coil, wouldn't you say?”

Dean frowns, struggling to figure out were _Abel_ could possibly fit into this whole half-baked scheme Cas cooked up. “He's trying to take down _that_ dude?”

“More accurately, he's trying to take down the dude that _raised_ that dude.”

“Who the fuck--”

“He's not the only one up and about, either.”

_Oh, that's comforting. “_ Who else?”

“Your old buddy Death, for starters.”

Dean almost shudders. _That's gonna be a touching reunion, I'm sure._ Then again..if Death had a vendetta against him, he'd already be wiped off the map. Probably. No sense worrying about it, right? Right. Definitely. Bigger picture and all that crap.

“Who raised 'em?” he asks.

Crowley shrugs. “Most signs point to God.”

“Define ' _most'.”_

“Wasn't our lot, and I don't know of any angel with the stones to pull it off...Lucifer included.”

“So Cas thinks he's gonna kill _God?”_

The King's making an effort to look regretful, but he's got this slimy flicker in his eyes, the one that always seems the most compelling argument for beating him to a pulp. “I told him it was a bad idea.”

“But you knew what the plan was and you didn't stop him, is that what you're saying?”

“How was I to know he'd get this far?” Crowley squawks. “Besides, you know Castiel. He's unreasonable when there's cookies to move.”

Dean laughs and shakes his head. “That was a sub-par way to call an angel of the Lord a girlscout, _at best._ You're not even funny anymore, I'm just laughin cause it's a little uncomfortable to watch. _”_

“Oh? If you want to talk uncomfortable, we can talk about a certain green-eyed Winchester cradling a particular comatose angel's face in his hands, because I _definitely_ saw that--”

The next sound to come from the demon is the sound of his nose breaking as Dean slams him to the floor.

 


	9. In Denial

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, hey.  
> Have some manpain.  
> (This entire fic is such a piece of shit plot-wise but bear with me, I swear I'll fix it when it's actually finished omfg my rough drafts are god-awful I'm so sorry)

 

Bobby doesn't make a single move to stop him. In all fairness, Dean _warned_ the little prick, so he just watches Crowley drop with his smile hidden behind a curled fist. Still, he's got some wheels turning, because the talk he had with Sam while Dean was still busy tending to the angel in the back seat is fresh in his head. The talk where Bobby asked point-blank if Sam thought his brother and Cas might be... _together_ , and he can still hear the way Sam laughed and said, _I really doubt it._ He's got a perfect mental picture of the look that was in his eyes, a sort of _knowing_ , and the grin he'd tried to mask just before he added, _I keep waiting for them to just figure their shit out and realize they're basically married, though. The only one who isn't picking up on it is our brooding wonder out there._ He'd cocked his head towards the door with a mischievous little snicker, and then his face softened and he ran a hand through his hair. _I just worry sometimes. Cas...means a lot to him, y'know?_

In his heart of hearts, he's inclined to agree. He's seen the staring contests firsthand (always made a point not to mention it, though—they're _guys_ , and talking about that sorta shit is tricky for everyone involved). It's a little weird, maybe, being in love with an angel, but looking back on all the times he's watched _Dean_ watch _Cas--_ like he shines with a brilliance only Dean can see—gives him a stronger understanding of what's going on in the idjit's head. Pieces start falling into place, and that suspicion Bobby's been feeling for a while over the way Dean's been acting clears away into a singular certainty: _he loves him, and probably always has._

_He just doesn't know it yet. All that staring, and the poor son of a bitch still doesn't see it._

Doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. In any case, whatever Dean feels for the holy-roller isn't something the old man sees as _his business._ He merely saw what was obviously there, acknowledged it for what it was, and moved on. Cas is as much one of his boys as the Winchesters are, after all. Bobby's had a talent for collecting strays all his life, and Team Free Will is a product of that. He'll fight for Castiel just as hard either way, regardless of what the angel and Dean decide their bond is or isn't. Cas is _family_. He's already _theirs_ , and that's enough. Whether or not they might've boffed in the back seat isn't the issue.

The _issue_ is that John Winchester brought his eldest son up with a keep-em-safe mentality, told him he was responsible for the wellbeing of everything that matters, told him _be a hero, boy_ and _you should've been there, boy._ He brought his eldest son up to believe that the way to handle any situation when someone he cared about was on the line was to get reckless— _be a hero, be good, do what you gotta do._ It's the holiest verse in the Winchester Gospel, and it's led this idjit to do a lot of the same kinda half-cocked shit over the years. He's got a bloodline legacy of back-alley brawls on his shoulders, after all. There's no changing it, there's no talking Dean out of leaning inches from the demon's ear and snarling, “You're just _daring_ me to cut you.”

Plus, it's _Crowley_ , so fuck it. Bobby ain't even gonna bother.

Dean hauls the demon to his knees and orders, “Keep talkin.”

He keeps waiting for Crowley to fight back, but all he does is bow his head and bring his hands up to his face. Strikes him as strange—this is the _King,_ after all. There's gotta be an ulterior motive for letting Dean Winchester crush his dome in when he could scramble the Hunter's brains with a snap of his fingers...at the very least, if only because he's a proud little fuck and he's never gonna live this down among his minions.

But the demon surprises him. He pulls out a dark red handkerchief, dabs at the blood streaming from his nose, and says, “I told him I wouldn't help you find him, and he agreed to stay the hell out of Hell in return.”

“You didn't want him coming after you.” Dean doesn't have to make it a question.

“Can you blame me?”

“But you tipped us off anyway.” He's walking an unrushed circle around the demon now, scowling down at him. The knife is at the ready, like he's expecting retaliation just as much as Bobby is, but none comes.

Instead, Crowley sighs and gives a shrug. “He was getting out of control.”

“Cas is a man of his word,” Dean insists. “You woulda been safe down there, so who's control was he getting _out of_ , exactly?”

The demon hesitates, then finally says, “He broke the deal--”

“--oh, that's such _bullshit--”_

“--Dean, _listen to me!”_ He yells, “ _That--”_ He jabs a finger towards the parking lot. “--is _not_ Cas! He popped Lucifer's bloody box!”

Bobby watches the implications of this little tidbit dawn on Dean in waves. He comes to a complete halt mid-step and goes stone quiet. There's something close to horror on his face at first, then the betrayal sets in, and _jesus christ_ , that's a hard thing to see. He's got a front-row seat to the exact moment when the light goes out of those green eyes.

But Dean was brought up a soldier, and he's got a damn good gameface. He slips into it without even trying, all smoldering rage and retribution. He clears his throat and bends down to Crowley's eye-level, settles a heavy hand on his shoulder and asks, “Are you saying that Cas let the mothercunting devil out? And you _let_ Cas let him out?”

The demon holds a hand up. Trying to placate. Trying to reason. “He was _far_ above my pay grade by that point.”

“You're the fucking _King of Hell!”_

“Did you even try to stop him?” Bobby asks.

“First off, that isn't _my_ job, that's _your_ job. Second..” The King gives a pathetic sniffle and dabs at his nose again, turning to address the old man directly. “I _did_ try, as a matter of fact, but I'm not going to throw myself to the fucking wolf. Do you want to know _why_ I'm not going to do that? Because that. Is not. _My_ job.”

“Alright, alright, I get the point--” Dean grumbles as he moves back to give the demon space. “So, did he let him out, or...y'know.”

“Are you asking me if Castiel ate Lucifer?”

“Did he?”

“Don't know,” Crowley says. “He certainly ate _something_ that didn't agree with him _.”_

“How can you _not know?_ That's _your_ domain, motherfucker!”

The demon shrugs. “Lucifer isn't in the cage, that's all I've got for you.”

“You incompetent piece of shit, how the fuck--”

Bobby holds up a hand to interrupt Dean's fury. “Big picture, idjit.”

The eldest Winchester deflates a little, pauses to reign himself in and says, “Fine. So, if that ain't Cas, what _is_ it?”

“Something I'm not too keen to poke with a stick,” Crowley answers.

Dean laughs, low and soft. “I hear ya on that one.”

“I'm not a fan of the crazy-talk, I must say. It's bloody unnerving.”

“Where did killing him fall into the timeline of all this?” Bobby asks suddenly, “Did he spring the box before or after that?”

“...After,” the demon admits.

Dean thinks for a second, and finally shrugs. “Well, you're fucked, then,” he says, “because that means Lucifer was payback, factory resetting be damned.”

“In my defense, I came to you before that,” Crowley tells him. “So, that's gotta count for something.”

“Why reset him at all if you're so scared of 'im?” Dean asks.

“Pardon?”

“Cas had you shitting your pants, that's why you told me what was going on in the first place, but you still reset him. Why?”

“Because he's doing the Lord's work out there,” Crowley deadpans.

“Meaning, as scary as he was, you were still figuring out exactly how to use him to your advantage. Loose cannon or not, he's still a weapon, right?”

“More or less. I figure you lot have the best chance of bringing him round to his senses. My advantage here is _your_ advantage, too. He's _back_ isn't he?”

“Oh, yeah, I'm sure you spent _so long_ talking him into coming home.”

“Again, that isn't my job.” Crowley lets out a long-suffering sigh and picks himself off the floor. He takes the time to dust himself off, deliberate and slow, then stands up straight. “Look, what I'm saying is, the best chance of having him under anything _resembling_ control is to have him here. It's in my best interest that Dean bat his eyes and share his feelings and appeal to whatever ability to reason that mental fucking asshat still _has._ Meaning it's in my best interest that he remain with you. Let that be enough, because it's all I've fucking got.”

Bobby watches Dean close, watches him fiddle with the knife while he considers how much of what the King's saying might be bullshit.

“I know you just want something to kick around for a while,” he continues, staring straight into that green-eyed gameface, even as his nose begins to heal, “but I'm not here to be your punching bag. I'm here to help.”

“How?” Bobby asks.

“I have more information.” Crowley says, “but it's going to take a while to explain. We need to go somewhere private.”

The old man's been thinking along similar lines. They're starting to look shady to the other occupants of the little motel, and having an unconscious man chained up in a car doesn't help. “Your place or mine?” He asks Dean. Mostly, he wants to give the idjit something to think about, something to focus on that isn't starting torture sessions in tiny rented rooms, because Crowley's not _wrong._ The boy's just _itching_ for the excuse to hand out a beat-down.

“The Bunker's closer,” he finally answers. “We'll all head there when Sammy gets back, uncuff Cas right into a warded room. I don't wanna drive with him like that longer than I have to.”

“Works for me,” Bobby tells him.

“But _you're_ not coming,” Dean says to Crowley. “We'll meet away from our place after Sam an' me figure out how to hold him for a while.”

“Fair enough.” the demon purrs.

“Ugh, stop doing that, it's creepy.”

“It damn well better be, given my position--”

Dean grins, holds a hand up to stop him. He can't keep back a genuine laugh, like he suddenly thinks Crowley's the second coming of Carlin, shaking his head as he tries to get the giggles to settle. “You, uh, you let a toddler in a trenchcoat bust the devil's cage. Don't talk like you're billy badass.”

“Call me when you're less of an asshole,” the King huffs, and then he's gone.

Bobby looks over at the eldest Winchester, watches him lock his jaw and lace his hands at the back of his neck as he stares a hole into the floor. “You done with your theatrics?”

“He deserved it,” Dean says quietly.

“This ain't the time _or_ the place for that kinda shit,” He tells him, taking deliberate care to keep his voice low. “You _gotta_ keep your head, you idjit. There's a lot riding on this.”

“You think I don't know that?”

“Well, you didn't seem to know it when you were gettin' Crowley's face acquainted with the floor, and that's when it _really_ woulda been a good time to keep it in mind, so get yourself in check.” A pause, and then he softens. “You alright, son?”

Dean looks up at him and nods.

“It's a lot to wrap my brain around all at once,” Bobby continues. “It's hard for you too, I know that, and I'm here if you need me. But _this_ \--” he points to the little puddle of blood Crowley's face left in the dull grey carpet. “--does _not_ sit well. You want me an' Sam to treat you like you know what the fuck you're doing? Start showing you've got a lick of sense and maybe try a little harder not to be a goddamned heathen.”

“Sorry.” He sounds honest enough, but his face is where the _real_ honesty lies. There's this sense of righteous wrath coming off him, a trademark red flag that he's _on a roll—_ fuck—and Bobby grasps for something to say that might get him back towards the right trains of thought. The old man has a pretty acute sense of how Dean works, and he's handled situations like this with him more times than he can count. He's a fighter, a soldier, but if you don't put him on track to focus on something positive or useful, he responds to stressful situations by hacking his way through him. His first instinct when presented with anything upsetting is to get drunk and find something to hit. It's a defense mechanism on some level, but it's a fucking _dumb one._

_Big picture_ , Bobby reminds himself. “You wanna call Sam and let him know what's goin' on?”

“Yeah, I should do that.” He pats his back pocket for his phone. “I should step out and check on Cas, too.”

“Clean up your mess first.” Bobby gestures to the bloodstain. “You spilt it, you scrub it.”

 

*

 

Sam doesn't bat an eye when he hears the flutter of wings to his right. He keeps driving, relaxed and neutral, and says, “The fuck do you want?”

“Is that any way to talk to your friends?”

A slow grin starts to tug at his mouth. He looks over, laughing softly. “How the hell are you even alive, dude?”

Gabriel smirks. “Who said I was ever dead? _”_

“Are you fucking with me, or..?”

The angel lets out a long, slow sigh and shifts to look out the window, like he just can't bother dignifying him with a response. _Angels can be such regal little bastards._

“It's good to see you,” Sam says after a period of awkward silence.

Gabriel brightens considerably and turns toward him. “Behold! I come bearing news, and the majority of said news is that Castiel's river of shit is rising at a pretty alarming fucking rate, so if you could just...uh, _y'know_ , make that _not_ happen, that would be aces.”

“We're working on it,” he says. “I'm on my way back from getting some stuff, then we're heading to the Bunker with Cas and warding a place for him while we figure out what to do.”

“You'll wanna do it quick,” the angel tells him. “That vessel's getting fucked in a bad way.”

“How much do you know about what's going on with him?” Sam asks. “Or...in general, I guess. He's not connecting many dots for us.”

“You know that PSA where they break an egg into a hot frying pan and go _this is your brain on drugs?_ ”

“Y...es?”

“Okay. Well, take that egg and throw it in a dumpster fire. That's his brain on that much Grace.”

“Sorta figured that just from _talking_ to him, though.”

“I haven't run into him yet, personally, but I've heard horror stories.” Gabriel says.

“Dude, I have _seen_ some shit.” He laughs, even as he shudders involuntarily. “The way he took Metatron down, man...”

“I can imagine,” the angel says. He's dead serious in a way Sam has only seen on one or two previous occasions. It hasn't stopped being weird yet, seeing this side of Heaven's resident goofball—it's a face he isn't used to, a face that doesn't seem to belong when Gabriel's default expression has always been an impish smile.

Sam lets out a heavy sigh and shifts his gaze back to the road. “What're the chances that we can pull him outta this?”

“I'm not sure, but I doubt they're good.”

“Yeah, I was hoping you wouldn't say that.”

“In any case, Castiel is my brother. I'll help however I can.”

“Thanks. We're gonna need all the hands on deck we can get.”

Gabriel pauses, deep in thought. “How's your brother handling things?”

He breathes out a laugh. “As well as you'd expect, I guess.” Finally, that little grin returns. Sam can't see it so much as _feel_ it, but he's happy that it's back.

“Not great, then, huh?”

“That actually might be an understatement.”

“Sounds about right.”

They spend a while longer catching up, and Sam fills him in about Castiel's condition. The angel listens intently, nodding along. Afterwards, they lapse into companionable silence and each mull the situation over from their respective sides of the battered Impala. Talking everything through helps him analyze the immediate issue, but he's gotta think on it for a while afterward—especially now—because _jesusfuck_ they need a plan. He needs a minute to figure out what questions to ask next, what ideas might hold some sort of potential when it comes to getting Cas back to normal. Thankfully, Gabriel seems content to leave him to it.

_Add that to the 'small miracles' pile,_ he thinks.

“Here,” Sam says, shifting to retrieve his phone from the console. He holds it out to the angel and says, “Call Dean for me. He's gonna need a heads-up that you're coming.”

 

*

 

Dean comes out of the room with both their travel bags and throws them in the trunk without a word while Bobby loads the rental. They're all seasoned masters in the art of picking up and hauling ass, so it only takes a matter of minutes for the two of them to be standing between the cars, engaged in a spirited debate on who's riding where. That's how Sam finds them as he returns from the check-out lobby, arguing back and forth while a hapless-looking Gabriel watches on.

Dean wants to ride with Cas— _because of fucking course he does,_ he thinks—but Bobby doesn't like the idea. Neither does the archangel, as it turns out. He holds a hand up to silence Dean's bitching, his brow furrowed like he's starting to get one mother of a migraine. “Listen, kiddo...I'm gonna be blunt about this, because it's what you seem to respond to best. If this shit goes south--”

“Don't talk to me like I'm a fucking child,” Dean says. He manages to keep his voice down, but there's some genuine anger in it, some authentic poison.

Regardless, Gabriel remains unaffected by that patented Winchester wrath. “...Anyway, if this shit goes south,” he repeats, “I'll have a better chance at subduing him than you _ever_ could. Plus, this entire car smells like cheap liquor and broken promises, and frankly, I wanna get the fuck _out._ ”

Sam follows his brother's eyes to Castiel, hunched over and stone still. No sign of consciousness. He looks over at the car—his battered Baby, with her dented side and tarped-up window—then finally drops his head. “...Fine.” It comes out a bit reluctant, but he backs up to pull the door open all the same.

He flops into the vacated seat, Bobby and Gabe pile into the rental, and then they're gone.

 

*

 

For the first hour or two, Sam dances around the things he really wants to ask— _what'd Cas say to you? did you see the same side of him I did? are you okay?—_ because his brother's already agitated. Best to let him brood for a while, let him collect himself, let him have time to prepare for that conversation. It'll make the whole thing easier on _both_ of them.

“Be careful on her brakes.” It's the first thing Dean's said since he hopped in the Impala. “You gotta treat her like the delicate lady she is.”

_You put your fucking fist through the back window a few days ago, but okay._ The thought rises to the surface from the worst corner of Sam's head, thick toxin just _waiting_ for him to let go. _We'll just keep pretending you know what you're talking about so you feel better._ He bites down on each word perched at a dangerous kilter on his tongue, forces them back where they belong and rolls his eyes instead. “I'm not gonna fuck up the car, dude.”

“Better not.”

Doesn't bother him much, not really. In his weird way, Dean's just trying to project some semblance of normalcy, and what could be more normal than the _big brother is a big ass jerk_ shtick? Sam gets it. Kinda wears his patience thin, sure, but he understands. It's an unspoken understanding—so much about the inner workings of their bond as brothers _is._ The ones they don't mention are the ones that matter the most, the ones that have weight.

“You're an asshole,” he says, but there's a fondness to his voice that coaxes a smile from the shotgun seat. That's good. Maybe it's just the way the highway lights pass over Dean's face, but he's paperwhite and his eyes have seemed... _off_. It's reassuring to see him look a little more like himself, if only for a minute.

“What happened with Crowley?” Not that he cares, just seems as good a starting point as any when you don't know the exact moment when the person you're talking to might completely shut down.

“He showed his smarmy face, I beat his ass, we talked for a while..” Dean sighs and rubs his face with both hands. “If he's not bullshittin, we're boned.”

“ _How_ boned?” Sam asks.

“'Lucifer-out-of-the-cage' boned.. Oh, _and_ Death's back, so get out your welcome banner for _that_ little slice of donefuckedup pie.”

“ _Shit,”_ he whispers. “That's gonna be a tough grudge to settle.”

Dean shrugs, cracks the window, and lights a cigarette. “Maybe not as hard as we think it'll be, though.”

“How d'ya figure?”

“Whelp--” he takes a drag as he thinks it over. “I look at it like this: if Death wanted me to take a dirt nap, I'd already be in the ground.”

_Fair enough._ Still a pretty alarming threat, if you ask Sam, and he doesn't like how cavalier his brother's voice is as he says it, but there's a soundness to his logic that's comforting. Not a _whole_ bunch, no, but just enough for him to act independently of the cancerous ball of anxiety swelling in his chest. Just enough for him to draw in a breath and brace for impact. “Do you think Cas did it? Let the devil out, I mean?”

Dean goes quiet, watching wisps of smoke twist around themselves as they rise from his Marlboro. “I keep tellin myself he ain't capable of somethin like that, but...”

_But you keep being wrong,_ part of Sam wants to say back. He bites the inside of his cheek until the urge recedes to whatever ugly box it crawled from.

“I don't know, man.” Dean shifts uncomfortably and takes another drag. “What the blue-eyed fuck are we supposed to do about it if he _did?”_

“I got nothin' so far.”

“Yeah, that makes two of us.”

The Winchester boys sigh in sync, unbeknownst to either one.


	10. In the Bunker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it's been a while.  
> Um.  
> Surprise!

Cas has just started breaking through the surface of his own subconscious. There's a maddening itch between his shoulder blades already, a pins-and-needles burn that absolutely should _not_ be there, but he doesn't dare move to try and find relief. He _wants_ to, sure, but the others--

_(still Castiel you must be still)_

_(don't give the game away)_

_\--_ won't allow it. Maybe that's good, though. He likes the Absence. It's a relief to hide away in a place where he doesn't have to answer for his sins. It's easier to give up and just trail along as an afterthought. His brothers are dragging him down a twisted path and it's easier to accept that he can't break their hold if he doesn't know where that path is leading. Ignorance is bliss.

 _Let go and let God,_ as Dean would say. Sure, he always said it with an ironic smile and a sarcastic huff that was somehow meant to be a laugh, and maybe it took entirely too long for Cas to realize that he didn't mean it that way and was actually saying something more akin to _nice knowin ya, boys,_ but Cas will never go down in the lore as the Angel of Reading Subtext.

Even in his soupy state of awareness, he sees Dean Winchester's face with stunning clarity. He sees those eyes, sees the way they look when sunlight hits them _just so_ and illuminates the flecks of gold scattered in his irises. He sees the worry lines etched around them, remembers the way his brow furrows when he's reading and the way he smiles as he looks up at the stars. Every detail comes to him, from the dusting of freckles scattered across the bridge of Dean's nose to the scar above his right eyebrow. It's a painful thing to focus on, especially for as long as Castiel's been doing it, but he can't help himself. Never _could,_ really. Not when it came to Dean.

_(maybe that's the problem)_

Cas can admit--if only to himself—that there's a certain token of truth to the insidious whispers in his head.

He mirrored Dean like the like the tides mirror the moon from day one. Push and pull. Give and take. Hurt and heal. The angel's just now realizing that it had less to to with _humanity_ and more to do with one human in particular. The Others knew it before he did—christ, all of _heaven_ knew it from the jump—but Cas has always been half a step too slow on the uptake. Looking back over the years since he laid a hand on that man's torn-apart soul, endlessly following him like he was some guiding light, even if the only light to be found came from his soul being _on fire._

_(always trailing along eh)_

He'd hoped Dean would be the one to burn the bridge. _Prayed for it_. Wished for it with everything inside of him, all the while refusing to accept that it was beyond Dean's power, that it would go against everything Dean was made from. Would he even be here in this car now, if not for the pull he felt towards him? If not for the need to hear the Hunter's voice and feel that steady hand on his shoulder? Of course not. He hadn't _planned_ on making himself known to the Winchesters, certainly not after everything he had done, but he underestimated just how tightly he's bound to their side.

To Dean's.

_(always looking for something to follow)_

_(that's Cas for you)_

Both his eyes begin throbbing to the rhythm of his vessel's heart. _Shut up._

_(what could you possibly do to us?)_

Probably nothing, but he desperately wishes otherwise. That fucking voice is enough to make him want to cave his own skull in. He'd probably _try_ it, too, it he weren't currently caught

( _still Castiel stay still)_

somewhere midway between autonomy and autopilot.

“He's bleeding again.”

Gabriel's voice surprises Cas, but he's glad for it. There's less of a chance of either of the Winchesters getting caught in the crossfire with the wrath of an archangel to protect them.

The Others are already working out how to use Gabriel to their advantage, as well, but he doesn't want to think about that. He doesn't want to know. As long as the Hunters come out of this unscathed, he can't care.

“Bad?” Bobby asks, craning from the driver's seat to get a look at him.

“Let's just say it's a good thing he's an angel.”

Castiel begs to differ.

“We're gonna be there'n about an hour. He gonna fly apart before then?” Bobby tries to make it sound like a joke, but there's a grim undercurrent in his voice that Cas feels guilty about.

_don't care don't care don't care_

“I don't think so.”

There's some rustling to Castiel's right, and then Gabriel's pressing some sort of cloth to his face. It feels like more than he deserves, but he can't pull back from it. That would be

_(giving the game away)_

a bad idea. He's not stupid.

Not _that_ stupid, anyway.

“Listen,” Gabriel says, tilting Cas's head back to staunch his spontaneous nosebleed. He moves him carefully, like he's scared of snapping his neck. The concept of an archangel treating him with such earnest _softness_ is almost laughable, though. Especially after all Castiel's done to their brothers so far. “I didn't want to tell Sam and Dean, but I don't know that pullin' him out of this is really possible.”

 _It isn't,_ Cas wants to say. _Just quit while you're ahead. All of you just stop._

“We'll find a way,” Bobby says firmly. “For now, we've got more pressing matters. Like holdin' him for any stretch of time. Dean doesn't want to use holy fire.”

Something about the way he says it feels heavy with a subtext that Cas can't quite decipher. Gabriel, however, seems to get the message.

“That'll be easy. I know of a couple sigils that might do the job. You'll need someone to keep watch on a constant basis, though, just in case Cas tries to pull some tricky shit.”

 _You would certainly know all about tricky shit, wouldn't you?_ It's a pretty hostile thought to have towards the one wiping blood off your face, but it comes to him nonetheless. He turns his focus away from the conversation in shame.

_don't care don't care don't care_

His mind's eye drifts back to Dean, as it always does and always has—without any conscious direction, in other words. That's fine, though. Right now, it's the closest he can be to the righteous man himself.

This time, he's remembering how the Hunter's hand shook as cleaned him up. He's remembering the glassy _barely-holding-it-together_ look in his eyes and the strained smile and the rawness of his voice and how he wanted to take hold of Dean's face and say something that could give him a little peace. He _deserved that,_ but Cas couldn't give it to him. His mouth was as bound as his hands, and no amount of gazing into those sad eyes could help him articulate the things Dean needed to hear. It's been Castiel's deepest regret (one of them, rather—there's been a whole slew lately).

He should've apologized, even though he still thinks he's doing the right thing. He should've told him that he did all of this as an act of love. He should've explained that he would go to _any_ lengths, up to and including mutilating the entire host of Heaven, just to keep Dean from setting his soul on fire for the greater good _again_.

But he hid instead. He couldn't face the pain in Dean's last-ditch attempts to smile. It was too much, the _guilt_ was too heavy in his chest.

“You got any idea why the hell he might've sought Sam out the way he did?” Bobby asks.

“We won't know unless he volunteers that information,” Gabe answers after a minute. “I've got a couple theories, though.”

“Kinda seems like he _wanted_ to be stopped.”

“That's one idea, yeah.”

A _stupid_ idea, if you were to ask Cas, but he's not about to speak up and say so. Doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of it all. The fate of the universe isn't in his hands—not anymore, anyway. He's just along for the ride.

 

*

Dean tries to get a few fitful minutes of sleep here and there, but mostly he just sees NotCas when he closes his eyes, all crazy laughs and weird smiles. He gives up and has Sam buy an armful of redbull at a little gas station just off the main road. He chugs two of them in rapid succession before they even make it out of the parking lot with Sam watching from the driver's seat in horrified fascination.

“What?” Dean asks, tossing the empty cans back into the bag and reaching for a third one to sip at a more leisurely pace.

“How does your heart handle that shit?”

He shrugs. “S'been through worse, way I look at it.”

Sam makes his patented _seems legit_ face and turns back onto the street.

Once they've been driving for a while, Dean clears his throat, his eyes fixed on the can that he absently turns around in circles. “So, uh. I saw the other one.” He feels Sam glance over, but he makes a point to keep his eyes downward. It took a while to work up the nerve to mention it--his stomach's twisted in a knot and there's a chemical taste in the back of his mouth, but it's something they've _got_ to talk about. “Y'know. Giggles.”

“Bad?” Sam asks.

He shrugs the question off with a weak smile, but his little brother looks like he got his answer.

“At least we've got Gabriel now. That's something.”

He nods and takes another sip of redbull. That _is_ something. But—and this is the kicker—there's a good-to-fair chance that it won't be _enough_.

That high-pitched laugh is still echoing off his skull, and it makes him want to throw up. He shudders and fumbles for another cigarette. That sure as _shit_ wasn't Cas. But was it the other angels, or did he just go batshit crazy? Would Dean be able to tell one way or the other?

Probably not.

But part of him thinks he _could_ tell. Part of him—the part he never trusts as much as he should, something that only seems to speak up when it's Cas's stupid head on the chopping block, something that always has a hint of Sam's matter-of-factness to it as it mutters _you know him better than that, you're just being a fuckin' jerk—_ is dead set on it.

 _This all used to be so much easier,_ he thinks.

Except that's _never_ been the case with Cas, not even from the beginning. Castiel's completely incapable of half-assing _anything_ , fuck-ups included. As frustrating as the bastard could be, Dean has always been able to understand where he was coming from. Cas was hardwired with this earnest sense of purpose, but he doesn't always know what that purpose _is_ , and that's where his more _ambitious_ ideas came from. As furious as that goddamn trenched whirlwind could make him, Dean understands that, and he has to respect it. Possessing the wrath of Heaven didn't immediately bestow you with a moral compass. Cas had to _learn_ that, and Dean wasn't exactly a shining influence for the dude from the jump. _But this..._

“You gonna be okay?” Sam tries to sound casual, but he rubs his nose right before he asks it and Dean _knows_ that tell. He's making an effort skirt around the subtext, probably more for _Dean's_ benefit than his own. He can't really fault Sam for that. He's got a rich, _long_ history of being an absolute bastard when he's in a tailspin, and Sammy takes the brunt of it most times. “Dean?”

He stalls for a few seconds while he takes a drag from his cigarette. “Crowley said somethin that's needlin at me...” He breathes out a cloud of grey. “The whole 'factory settings' spiel.”

Sam frowns and motions for him to elaborate.

“I'm...not banking on there being much of Cas left in there, man. So what's the point in saving the vessel if it's just a vessel?”

“He's still in there,” Dean says firmly. “Plus, the more time he spends fixing himself is gonna mean _less_ time he's got to go let loose whatever plague he's tryin to kickstart.”

“So what's your plan, then?” Sam asks. “Are you gonna torture your best friend until he talks, since we still have no idea what the fuck he's even _doing,_ and then just knife him at the end because—'hey, fuck it, he'll be back eventually and those factory resets are pretty goddamn handy'?”

“Aw, _christ,_ Sammy--”

“I mean...” He huffs out a sigh. “I genuinely do _not_ see either of us causing major harm to the crazy son of a bitch, 'factory resetting' be damned. Neither of us are that dude.”

 _Anymore_ , Dean almost adds. He still remembers what it was like to look at the wold through black eyes. He still remembers closing those black eyes and basking in fantasies of fucking Castiel's actual _skull--_

His insides recoil at the fragments of the scenes still lodged somewhere in his head. _No no, that wasn't me, that was.._

“You gonna be okay?” Sam asks again, even though he knows the answer already. Doesn't matter what Dean says, one way or the other. It's just a formality, a ritual they partake in. He asks because Dean has a compulsive need to be the rock. He needs to hear himself go 'yeah, Sammy, everything's fine, we'll figure it out'. Saying it out loud is what gets him through. Fake it til ya make it. His masterstrokes always come when he grits his teeth and just hauls himself up against the shitstorm. Takes more luck than he would ever admit to his little brother, though. He tries harder than he'll ever admit to look like it's all part of the plan, like he's this unwavering force Sammy can always count on. That's always been his job. That's how heroes are supposed to be, aren't they?

"This whole thing..." He shrugs, and he's watching the streetlamps flash by from his half of Baby now, worrying at the insides of his cheek. "It just sorta...set me back on my heels, that's all. I'll deal. Right now, we gotta focus on Cas. He can't stay like this. Not for long. We gotta think of somethin."

"Well, we'll have everything the Bunker has to offer, so we'll hit the books."

"What d'you think the Metatron thing was about?"

Sam sturgeons. "I think whatever's in Cas was sending him a message. Or us."

"Maybe both."

"Oh, yeah. I think they're fucking with him pretty heavily."

"Did it feel like Lucifer to you?"

Sammy hesitates, all frowns and furrowed brows. "I gotta tell ya, man, it really didn't. If it was Lucifer, he'd be telling us it was him. He's got too much of an ego. He'd want credit."

Dean starts bouncing his knee. "And there's the way it talks. 'We'. Satan's not really a team player."

"Especially if said team is supposedly to save the world."

"If he's supposed to be stopping the Apocalypse, what _is_ said Apocalypse, anyway? If that's why he did all this, why wouldn't he want our help? What, the crazy son of a bitch didn't trust us? We're havin a goddamn family pow wow as soon as the holy asshat wakes up. Sammy, I swear to god--"

Sam laughs, and he's got that shit-eating grin on his face, the one that always makes Dean wanna elbow the little shit in the ribs. "No argument here, dude. You wanna talk to him alone first?"

"You bet your gigantor ass I'm gonna talk to him alone first."

"Are you gonna tell him that you're in love with him?"

Dean's eyes snap over to Sam. His little brother's grin has softened to that goddamn puppy-eyed look of sincerity, and all he can think to do is blurt out, "Sweet Christ, are we really doing this right now?"

"Dude, it's been years. I can't watch you tiptoe around this anymore. It's gonna kill you both, and somebody has to tell you to stop being a fucking jerk. If you don't want to talk to me about it, that's fine, but he deserves to know. Even now. Hell, especially now."

He scrunches his eyes shut and mulls it over for a minute before he finally manages to get his throat working again. "...How long have you known?"

"I always knew there was something there. Profound bond and what not."

Dean can't help but chuckle. Cas can be a real jackass, but his sense of poetry is second to none.

"And I knew you really liked him after the Leviathan took him to the river. The way you held onto his trenchcoat. And, uh, when you first got out of Purgatory. I just wasn't sure if you'd realized it yet at the time, and I wanted to just give you space so you could process your bullshit. But, Dean--man, c'mon--this is one of those things where waiting for the right time is gonna mean waiting forever. Can you honestly not see that?"

Dean sighs and rubs the side of his face. "Okay, alright, I get the fuckin point."

"Does that mean you're gonna tell him?"

"Shut up."

"So...yes?"

"So shut up, you little shit."

Sam breaks into a grin.

*

“What exactly is the point of this?” Dean asks. He's standing outside of the Bunker, constantly shifting his gaze from the unconscious angel in the back seat to Bobby and Sam, who start throwing ingredients together in a silver bowl placed on the closed trunk of the car. “He's out cold. Why don't we just uncuff him and drag 'im in?”

“He might be dickin' with us.” Bobby says. “The spell's a safety measure. It ain't gonna hold for more'n a minute or two, but that's all we'll need.”

“It ain't gunna hurt him, right?” He feels stupid for asking, but he can't help himself.

“He'll be fine,” Gabriel says. “You should start warding the place, though. If things are as bad as you say they are, you're gonna need some heavy-duty bars on his cage. Here.” He passes Dean a bit of paper with a bunch of unfamiliar sigils drawn on it. “Use all of those. They're gonna be your best line of defense.”

The word _cage_ triggers some unpleasant Lucifer-related memories, but he nods and shoves the scrap into his back pocket.

“We'll wait for you to get done with that before we start,” Sam says. He's got that look he gets sometimes, all frowns and furrowed brows

“Yeah, okay.” Dean spares Cas a final glance. “I'll be quick.”

He picks the room right next to his own so he has a better chance of hearing Castiel call should he need anything and busies himself with making it comfortable first—clean sheets from the linen closet, extra blankets on the chair in the corner, a ridiculous amount of pillows given the fact that angels don't even sleep, a few random books from the library to keep him entertained when he finally comes out of whatever funk he's in. Painting the sigils Gabriel gave him takes the better part of an hour, but he's glad to have something to focus on besides that all encompassing oh-god-the-sky-is-falling feeling in the pit of his gut.

 _He's gunna be pissed to pieces when he wakes up,_ he thinks, stepping back to survey his work. Not that the prospect of an angry Cas bothers him much. After everything that's happened, he just can't bring himself to give a good goddamn about whether or not the angel's mad.

Pissed off beats being dead any day of the week.

Dean runs a hand through his hair and sighs. _Alright, better go get this shit over with._

 

_*_

 

Cas doesn't move, even as the boys carry him to his room— _his cage,_ Dean thinks miserably—and lay him on the bed.

“...Now what?” Sam wonders aloud, straightening up to look at his brother.

“ _Now_ you bring me a bottle of Jack and hit the books,” he answers with a weak smile. “I'm gunna hang around in here case he decides to come out of it.”

Once he leaves, Dean pulls a chair to the bedside and gears up for the waiting game.

*

 

The first thing Cas sees when he opens his eyes is Dean sitting at his side, his face haggard and far too pale for the angel's liking as he thumbs through a dusty tome from the bowels of the Bunker's extensive library. It only takes a second or two for Dean to feel his gaze and glance up, immediately relegating his book to the nightstand and leaning forward to lay a hand on Castiel's forearm.

"Mornin, sunshine."

The Hunter says it with a smile, but there's something in his eyes that makes Cas's heart hurt. He extracts himself from Dean's touch and looks away.

"Still not feelin all that chatty, huh?"

Cas presses his lips into a tight line and develops a sudden fascination with a loose thread on the sleeve of his trenchcoat.

"I really hate it when you do this, man."

 _'I know you do',_ he almost says. _'I know, and I'm so sorry.'_

The words are there, he can feel them, but he can't get them out. His throat's a glue trap.

_'This wasn't how it was supposed to go.'_

"What the hell are you doin, Cas? What IS all this?"

_(don't give the game away Castiel)_

He closed his eyes and sighs.

"You got me an' Sammy scared to death," Dean continues. His voice is raw and quiet. "Right now, all signs are pointing to you not making it outta this and it's..." He trails off, drops his head. Castiel turns back to face him and realizes he's in tears with a sharp pang of guilt. "Cas, we don't wanna lose you. I can't even stand thinking we might. You don't belong to those flyin ass monkies, you belong to _us_. You're _ours_ , Cas, you're--"

_(a glorified lapdog)_

"Stop it," Cas murmurs. "Just stop."

"That's not gunna happen." Dean tells him. "If you're so fuckin inconvenienced by the fact a couple of humans happen to give a damn about you, get your feathered ass up and MAKE us stop."

"You're not looking at the big picture."

"That's probably true." Dean admits.  "Kinda hard when the picture's in pieces and YOU have most of them."

"You and your brother are to stay out of this."

"Sure, we'll fall back just as soon as you explain what the blue-eyed fuck happened in the mountains. Fair enough, yeah?"

"This isn't a negotiation."

"I ain't treating it like one.”

Cas narrows his eyes up at him, but Dean just flashes back one of his cocky little smirks.

“You're a monumental pain in the ass,” the angel informs him.

“Maybe so,” Dean says, shaking his head a little, “but at least I can still sleep at night.”

( _liar liar)_

Castiel clamps his mouth shut and rubs his forehead. The Hunter stares at him, expecting Cas to tell articulate all the things he doesn't know how to say. For all of Dean's bitter cynicism, there's _trust_ in those eyes, there's hurt and something that feels like a prayer. All Cas has ever wanted to do is take this man's face in his hands and fucking _save_ him, and he still wants that now. It's all he really gives a fuck about, truth be told, but look where the fuck it's gotten them through the years.

“Cas, c'mon.” It's a plea he's made before. He isn't deaf to the echoes of the past— _their past—_ in his own voice, and he hates how urgent and desperate it all comes out, but he can't get the words to be anything other than what they are. “I'm askin you point-blank, man: _do not do this_.”

Cas won't even look at him. _That's_ the hit he takes the hardest, and it's doing more damage than a fistfight ever could. He feels it deep in his chest, a profound ache that has every part of him—mind, body, spirit, soul—crying out in a wailing chorus for him to wrench open his own ribcage and purge the bile before it corrodes him completely. It's an agony he's familiar with, he just never really got used to it. Probably never will.

Dean's got a thousand different curses in his mouth, an infinite number of furious ways to say _I need you_ and _you're everything to me_ and _If I lost you I'd never be the same_ without actually saying it. Fury is all he knows, all he _ever_ knew, and the things that come out instead of what he really wanted to say always have a knack for leaving their own kind of mark.

 _I need you_ becomes _you can't stay._

 _You're everything to me_ becomes _you stupid son of a bitch._

 _I won't be the same_ becomes _I will beat your ass into the mothercunting ground, angel of the Lord or not._

His downfall is that he never gets it right. He always pushes when he wants to pull.

There was a time when Cas challenged that part of him. He pulled when Dean pushed, he held on when Dean tried to let go. They were a paradox, but somehow it always just kind of _worked._

 _Used to_ , anyway.

“Christ, would you fuckin _look at me?_ Or _say_ something, at least? The catatonic thing's getting old.” The silence stretches on, but Dean keeps his eyes glued to him and just waits. And waits. And _waits._ His hands spasm into fists. “Dammit, Cas—”

“What would you like to hear?” There's a softness to Castiel's voice, a quiet resignation, like he threw in the towel long before this and Dean's simply unable to see it. It's probably not too far off from reality, but Dean won't accept that. He _can't._

“I mean...the truth would be a nice change of pace, don't you think?”

“It would break you.”

He barks out something like a laugh. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Cas sighs and rubs his forehead, keeping his eyes focused on the floor. “Don't ask stupid questions. You're an intelligent man, you don't need me to spoon-feed you obvious answers.”

“Why do you always gotta be so goddamn vague about everything?”

The angel draws himself up to his full height and finally meets his gaze with narrowed eyes. It's such a familiar thing, that haughty glare—pure _Cas_ , through and through. “Because _you_ apparently don't know what qualifies as a stupid question.”

Dean's throat tries to close up. He fights against the lump forming somewhere in the vicinity of his Adam's apple and leans a little closer, trying to somehow convey all the things he _wants_ to say with the tone of his voice instead of words because the right ones almost never come when he needs them, and even when they're _there_ , rolling around like loose marbles in his mouth, he's too chickenshit to spit them out. “I'm just trying to understand— ”

Cas holds up a hand to cut him off. “As I already explained, it would _break_ you. That's all the information you need.”

“How the hell would _you_ know? What, just 'cause I'm human you're gonna go ahead and assume I'm some kinda fragile fuckin pussy?”

“That isn't what I said.”

“What _are_ you sayin, Cas? 'Cause I gotta tell ya, you're talkin in puzzles and it's drivin me batshit.”

The angel leans forward, lets out a heavy sigh, then shifts his gaze back to the floor. It's the only answer he offers up.

Dean's never wanted to shake anybody as much as he does right at this moment. “Don't you _dare,_ ” he growls, “You don't _get_ to look away, you son of a bitch. After all this, the least you can do is look me in the fucking eye.”

His shoulders drop, but he keeps his head down and stays silent.

“ _Cas—”_ The desperation's coming back into Dean's voice, whether he wants it to or not. He stops, furiously scrubbing the gathering tears out of his eyes with his palms. When he speaks again, he sounds unsteady and strained. “I'm tellin you right-the-fuck- _now,_ man, I'm about to start throwin punches.”

“Do it, then.”

Not the response he was hoping for, but on some level it's the one he expected. He's tempted to follow through and beat the motherfucker six ways to Sunday, and that temptation lasts for precisely half a second before a wave of disgust sweeps it away. He swallows with an audible click and ducks his head to draw those bright blue eyes towards his own. They're so different than he remembers but still so mesmerizing, still so easy to get lost in, even if the busted blood vessels make him look like something from a feverish night terror. He searches Castiel's face for a long moment, hoping for some sort of emotion, some hint at what the fuck is going on in his head, _something. “_...Is that what you want? ”

It comes out before he has the presence of mind to run it through a filter. His insides squirm uncomfortably and he thinks, _nobody ever_ wants _an asswhooping, you fucking idiot._

Cas proves him wrong in three words, spoken with an earnest softness that makes Dean's chest tight: “I deserve it.”

“Oh, without a doubt,” he says with a dry laugh. “but, see...that ain't what I _asked,_ is it?”

“What I want doesn't matter.”

Dean frowns. He can't get a fucking read on the angel _at all_ , not with the hollow no-face he's got on. Castiel's always been stoic, sure, but this is different in a way he can't _quite_ place. All he really knows is that it scares the ever-living shit out of him. “What're you talkin about? Of course it does, man.”

He tries to turn away again, but Dean scoots forward a little and takes his face in both hands. “Cas, stop. _Please_ , just..” he trails off and watches the angel's brow furrow, like he can't understand how Dean Winchester, professional badass, could have the capacity to touch him in such a manner. But he doesn't pull back or protest—he leans _into_ it instead, if only briefly.

“You're trembling,” Cas murmurs.

The Hunter sees it for what it is: a thinly-veiled attempt to redirect the conversation. Even so, it feels like something he should be ashamed of. He sighs and releases him, then folds his arms across his chest. “Yeah, humans tend to do that when they're terrified.”

“What are you so afraid of?”

_I'm scared I'm not gonna be able to pull you back from this._

_I'm scared of what'll happen if I can't._

_I'm scared you might be too far gone already._

_I'm scared I'm gonna lose you._

Dean wants to say these things, but he can't. He's too proud. He clenches his jaw instead, trying to keep it all safely caged behind his teeth, and doesn't answer.

Mercifully, Cas doesn't press the issue. Probably knows better than to try by now. “It's...not a matter of believing you're fragile, you know. When I said that the truth would break you, I wasn't implying you wouldn't be strong enough to handle it. It's not a matter of strength, it's a matter of heart.”

“You're gonna have to elaborate, buddy.”

Cas hesitates, his brows pulled together in concentration as he debates how to articulate what he means. “You've got this... _way_ about you. When you love, you do it with every fiber of your being. It's a rare thing, a _beautiful_ thing, but it will eventually crush you. Or...I will, rather, and I don't mean just physically.”

“The S.S. Crush Dean sailed off into the horizon a long motherfucking time ago, asshole _._ You don't think takin off the way you did already got the job done? _Christ,_ I ran myself into the ground trying to find you, but you just...” he makes a vague shooing motion, “took the fuck _off_ , and—”

“Dean, _listen.”_ The angel says. “Do you remember the dream you had? The one where we were on the bench in the park?”

The redirection throws him a little off-center, but he nods. “You..said you had to talk to me.” His brow furrows. “That was the night I felt you die, and this happened.” He holds up his hand with a half-assed smile, the knuckles still mottled with the last vestiges of an ugly bruise.

For a moment, there's genuine concern in Castiel's eyes. “I can fix that,” he murmurs, leaning close and extending his arm with two fingers raised.

Dean bats him away. “What were you going to tell me?”

Castiel sighs and leans back, out of touching distance. “I had...intended to say goodbye.”

“So you knew Crowley was going to kill you, then.”

“That..” He pauses, shifts uncomfortably. “That, um, actually wasn't related.”

All the air seeps out of the room. Dean struggles for a shaky breath and manages a soft, “What?”

“You thought I was dead because I _wanted_ you to. I thought it would be easier that way. I thought...” He's got this pained look in his eyes, like this confession physically _hurts,_ but he soldiers on. “I thought it would help you.”

“Yeah?” There's a bit of edge to the Hunter's voice now, a little bite in the words. “Well, here's a spoiler alert, dickhead: you thought _wrong.”_

“I'm quite spectacularly aware of that, yes.”

“Why the fuck would you—”

“I wanted you to stop looking for me. I wanted you to believe I was dead so you could move on and keep fighting, and so I could do the same.”

“ 's that supposed to be _enough_?” Dean yells, his eyes burning with tears he would rather die than shed. “Look at what you've _done!_ How is _any_ of this actually worth it?”

“I..” Cas frowns, searching for an answer. “I made a mistake.”

“Oh, fuck you!” He snaps, ticking examples off on his fingers, “Let's _see...first_ you disappear _._ For _months_. And _then_ you started stealin all the other angels' thunder. _Then_ the shit in the fuckin Ozarks went down, and I still don't know what the fuck that was about, by the way, but jesusfuck, people _died._ People, Cas! _Not_ angels, _not_ demons, _not_ monsters! _And then_ you knew you'd fucked up, but whatever happened in the mountains must've been how you got the _awesome_ idea to leave your print and try to fake your death—”

“Dean,” Cas says, but he doesn't get any further than that.

“—nah, man,” he butts in, “you just shut the hell up and hang on to your ass. I'm not even _close_ to done, because according to Crowley, you let the fucking _devil_ out. So, thanks for that, you idiot.”

“I don't—“

“—oh! I forgot the best one! You claim you pulled all this stupid bullshit so it wouldn't _break_ me,” he's on his feet, moving across the room because that seems preferable to throwing a punch just now, and turns to face Castiel with a sarcastic laugh. “And then you walk up to Sam and kill Metatron right in front of him just for shits-n-giggles, like it's nothin! Like you thought we wouldn't _stop your stupid ass!”_

Cas's posture is rigid in a way he hasn't seen since the old days, back when the angel hadn't yet developed his little idiosyncrasies and tics. Dean keeps watching him, keeps holding his breath for the moment he's gonna _say something—anything—_ but he starts turning blue so he lets it out in a bitter ghost of a laugh. He scrubs a tear off of his cheek, goes back to where Castiel's still sitting on the bed, and crouches down in front of him to bring them to eye-level.

“You know me better than _anyone_ ,” Dean says. “so how the blue-eyed fuck did _any_ of this seem like a good idea? Huh? How did you _not_ realize that it was gonna go belly-up? How'd you _not_ know what it was gonna do to us both?”

“I'm trying to protect you from _worse_!”

_He's crying. Oh god, he's fucking crying._

Not much—only enough for a tear or two to roll out, but watching them fall twists Dean into knots. On instinct, he sits down beside him and puts a hand on his shoulder. As furious as the crazy son of a bitch makes him, underneath it all, he only wants him to be okay. He _needs_ that for him. “Let me help you fix this, Cas. We can figure something out before it's too late. Just—fuck, man, _please.”_

Castiel turns away and covers his face with his hands. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

“Okay, alright..” he's trying his best to soothe him, but he doesn't know how. He frowns, sliding his hand to rest high between the angel's shoulder blades in a flailing attempt to offer comfort. “Easy, buddy, it's—“

Cas flinches and jerks out of reach. “Don't!”

Dean pauses with his hand still outstretched and his brows pulled together, trying to process what just happened. “Wha'ssamatter? Are you hurting?”

“ _No,”_ Castiel snaps, just a little too quickly to be convincing, and swipes at his eyes.

“I'm callin bullshit. Lemme see.”

“It's nothing for you to be concerned about.”

“Come on, man, don't make me make you. It'd be weird and uncomfortable for _both_ of us.”

The angel turns and regards him with a narrow-eyed look of haughty irritation. “You'd have to catch me first.”

He grins and gestures towards the runes and sigils painted into the walls. “Challenge accepted _and_ completed. Try again.”

“I'm not certain you'll even be able to _see_ it—“

“Humor me.”

“I don't want to.”

“Tough shit, dude, 'cause you're gunna.”

A sigh, long and slow. Cas keeps glaring daggers, even as he stands up and struggles to shed his trench coat. “Ordinarily, we—the angels, I mean—never feel our wings. Not on this plane, anyway.” He grinds his teeth together, cautiously trying to get the damned thing past his shoulders, but Dean can tell by the stiff way he's moving that it's gotta hurt like a bitch. “They're not...” He sucks in a gasp, “... phys—physical things, the closest they come to ever being such is when we die.”

The Hunter lets him try on his own for a few more seconds before taking pity on him and stepping up to help. “What happened to 'em?”

“I've got absolutely no idea, but it started— _carefulcarefulohfuck—“_

Dean cringes in sympathy. “Shhh, I know, just breathe through it. You're okay, it's alright, just hang tight a little longer, yeah?”

Cas nods and draws in a breath that makes his whole body shudder. “It started in the Ozarks. Or...maybe directly after that. I can't be sure anymore. In the beginning, it was just sort of uncomfortable, but now...” He starts to sway as the trench hits the floor, but Dean steadies him with a firm hand on his shoulder.

“Easy, buddy, easy...” The Hunter waits for him to regain his balance, and then moves on to remove his suit jacket. “Gimme a heads-up if you think you're gonna pass out.”

“I won't,” Castiel huffs, as if the suggestion's mildly offensive in some way.

 _Probably is,_ he realizes. _He's an angel, after all._

Getting Cas free of his layers is a slow process. Dean works as gingerly as he can, murmuring the same little shushing noises he uses to comfort frightened witnesses, and steels himself for whatever horror-show he's about to find underneath it all.

 _Oh, god._ He draws in a shaky breath, carefully running his fingertips as close to the wounds as he dares.

Guts and gore are par for the course in this line of work. He's desensitized to a lot of it, from someone's brains splattered on the walls to entrails strung up like garland, but _this—_

There are two burned-black spots between Castiel's shoulder blades, each roughly the size of a tea saucer. The skin covering the wounds is charred to a crisp, peeling and cracked and weeping a strange gray fluid down his back. Dean swallows hard, forcing back his own squeamishness, and goes into _fix-it_ mode. “Lay down on your stomach for me,” he says, “I'm gonna get some stuff and try to patch you up.”

“You won't be able to do much.”

“Don't be a dick, Cas. Just shut the fuck up and get on the bed.”

To his surprise, the angel does as he's told. _For once._

 

 

 


End file.
